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# Tooth Fairy
- URL: https://www.andyposner.org/tooth-fairy/
- Published: 2024-12-07T17:35:20.000Z
- Updated: 2026-07-18T20:58:28.000Z
- Description: As my wife snuck into our son’s room to swap his tooth for money, I imagined this scene playing out decades ago, Dad, tired from a long day’s work, keeping his fingers crossed that I stay asleep, Mom, tired too, tiptoeing to my bed that...
- Author: Andy
- Tags: poetry, #Migrated-1784090317409, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-07-15 04:39

As my wife snuck into our son’s room to swap his tooth  
for money, I imagined this scene playing out decades ago,

Dad, tired from a long day’s work, keeping his fingers crossed  
that I stay asleep, Mom, tired too, tiptoeing to my bed that

tomorrow I might arise to enchantment, for she grew up dirt-  
poor in Soviet Ukraine, knew how hard and bitter life could be.

When my wife came back, tooth in hand, it was a triumph,  
the minor miracle done, as though the Tooth Fairy were real.

My son, who over breakfast palmed the five-dollar bill and  
asked question after question about her, didn’t seem to mind

that we told lie after lie in response: he loved the story because  
it’s a good story and all’s well that ends well. Yet there’s a moment

in a child’s life when he learns the world existed without him.  
At first, this is so absurd, he ignores it. But soon, a photo from

before his birth will trigger confusion and rage, and explanations  
simply beggar belief: to him there is no Before or After, only Now.

It will be years until he considers that, in time, all our teeth will  
decay—that we can we awake to Nothing. I watch him playing

in the yard. Sparrows munch on worms; spiders spin their webs.  
We are living a fairytale whose conclusion we cannot fathom.