Uprooted
By Kerri MacKenzie
I had big plans for my excess of skeleton. Oh the things I was going to do with it. I was going to grind a bit up and use it for spells. Put it in a tiny vial and save it for those moments when I feel less wise than usual. Maybe even take the most intact one and drill a hole on either side and wear it as a protection amulet. “I am strong.” “I am brave.” “I can do hard things.” These were the silly little incantations I would say as I smoothened the surface of my skeleton with my nervous little fingers. It’s a funny thing, having too much skeleton. I couldn’t let it go to waste.
I’d take another one with me when I went home. Well, when I went back to my birth country. I’d take it and I’d bury it and then I wouldn’t feel uprooted anymore. I wouldn’t go back and feel unbelonging. From there but also now from here. Now from nowhere. A little bit of my skeleton buried deep in Scottish soil would keep me connected. I chose to pluck myself out like a weed, like an overgrown thistle, and transport myself somewhere else. So is somewhere else home? I’d bury its sibling here. One tooth rooted in Scotland. One tooth rooted in France. Grounded. A hybrid thistle-fleur-de-lys weed that could claim its own space and thrive in this soil.
The last one, the one with the largest, curved root that was maybe just big enough to be rooted in my brain, I was going to save for something huge. Something real important. I was going to wait until all the leaves had gone from sickly greens, to burnt ambers, to browns and when they fell to the ground and rotted and the air was crisp and stung my nose and the night came before dinner. Then. Then, I was going to sit beside the river under the vast, ever-expanding blanket of stars. I’d sit under the waning crescent and I would hold my little skeleton in my hand and I would focus very, very hard and use it to speak through the veil. There must be magic in a wisdom tooth. There just has to be. And there are so many things I need to know. I’d use it to call upon the wisest woman I know, seems fitting to use a wisdom tooth for this, and I’d ask her; “Are you proud? Did I make the right choice? Can you come back for a minute please?” A little bit of skeleton as an offering to Spirit must be enough to grant me that? Just a minute. When the border between the living and the dead has been reduced to nothing more than a see-through wire-chain fence that anyone without a corporeal form could slip through, surely a minute wouldn’t be too much. I’d sit in the cold and feel the damp grass seep into my jeans and hold out my little hand with my little skeleton offering and she’d take it and sit with me for a while.
It seemed fated that four chunks of skeleton would be ripped from my mouth so close to Samhain. The wisest teeth, with the deepest roots and the most pain. That must mean something. All the years of them in my head must mean something.
I couldn’t speak when it was over. I had gauze pushed into each hole. I guess that was to stop the blood but what if that was all that was keeping the wisdom from my teeth inside too? What if my brain poured out the holes and I lost all of my wisdom? I had four holes and no roots. Through gauze and numb lips and swollen tongue I asked for my teeth back please. With unceremonious, surgical precision I was informed that they were already gone. My skeleton. My very own skeleton and all of its magical potential thrown away like weeds from the garden, destined to rot away on some great compost heap of excess bones.
Kerri MacKenzie is a Scottish lassie living in France. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in cultural studies while teaching. Her key areas of interest are wistful longing, the sea, Scottish folklore, Glasgow and death. She spends most of her days asking her tarot cards if today is the day she will finally sort her shit out. It never is.