This is part of a series of short, linked essays (bone fragments, if you will) about the death of my oldest brother. 

The night of my brother’s death, I roll my wisdom teeth in my hand, listening to the click of molars, crown against crown, feeling the mangled roots poke my palm, wondering if they could pierce and infect my skin, even after years exposed to air.  I remember when the dentist finally rooted the lower right tooth out of my jaw (the lower left had to be shattered and crushed), she played with it like a toy.  ”It looks like an elephant,” she said.  ”Look at the curly roots!  One of them is a trunk.”  

I laughed as she walked it across the back of my hand.  

“These are very special and different teeth,” she said.  ”Very rare.  I have never seen such roots before.  Beautiful.” 

I turn the teeth over and over.  They click like poker chips, and suddenly, I feel compelled to toss them across the table, let them roll like dice, place a bet: my brother had tangled, strange roots like this, too. I imagine his teeth as little plaster elephants, a dentist playing with them following a long, painful extraction. Maybe this could be one thing that identifies us as siblings.