Friday Fiction Meme: Description

It's my favorite time of week, time to link up to The Red Dress Club's Red Writing Hood.

Here's today's prompt: "This week? It's all about description. Your assignment: write a first-person piece about either eating your favorite food or taking a shower - without using a personal pronoun."

Rotten Diets

Tipped back in the blue pleather chair, light shining
in eyes covered by oversized gray plastic glasses--
not the cool kind.
Whir of the dentist's drill, its torque making teeth tingle,
numb gums giggle.

A year ago, in a race to lose
those last 12 baby pounds, food swapped for
gumballs--
Nerds gumballs.
The kind that come in a pack of five
red, orange, yellow, green purple.
Roy G.P., the rainbow's sweet cousin.

Still hungry after a lunch of carrots and salsa, string cheese,
nonfat yogurt, and guilt,
5 packs of five gnashed against pearly whites.
Tongue holding a chunk of chewed bubble against wise
teeth in the mouth's farthest corners,
sucking the sweet crystals--
Nerds, the best part--
from the center of the cheek-bulging ball
and cradling them there between cheek and gum,
between tooth and tooth,
trapping the sugar where it can't be forgotten.

At least 25 gumballs a day.
A $5 habit.
Like cigarettes without the chachet.
Looking like a Big Leaguer who needs to spit.
Chewing gumballs so fast that teeth clip lips,
devour skin inside mouth,
until air bubbles rise in gullet and gums itch.
Sugar high.
Empty but full.
Spoiled on the inside.

Dentist drills to uncover decay,
chisels rot from molars and wisdom teeth,
presses dark softened silver into the smooth white holes.
Every smile from here on out
shows teeth that appear to be full
of the Oreos
the Nerds
were supposed to banish.