I, too, Hans Christian,
once left a warning note. Your bedside
table’s scribble read, I only appear
to be dead—an effort to ward off
the would-be pallbearers
who’d drop you
into your grassy plot in Nørrebro,
forgetting to check your nostrils
with a hand mirror for a fog
of breath. You dreaded
startling awake, six feet of Denmark
on your chest. At seventeen,
I stuck my own note
to the base of a blue
ceramic toothbrush holder:
Don’t forget to brush
in small, soft circles. As a child,
I’d chipped my right front tooth
and incisor on a pool’s
concrete edge and had grown
phobic about further
eroding my smile. I worried
that if I came home at midnight
still tripping from a five-strip
of blotter acid, I might brush
maniacally and scrape
off chunks of gum,
my loosened teeth dropping
to the porcelain sink bowl,
like bloody dominoes. I might
wake up the next day
with a corpse-face. It’s important,
Hans Christian, to have a system,
a reminder: a few words written
to catch the eye and hold
back the hand that would bury us.