The Wobbly Tooth

A seven-year-old girl writes everything in her notebook.

Small things first:
a substitute teacher whose sneeze sounds like a trumpet,
moss that looks like a living forest,
and shoes that appear stuck on rooftops like they grew there.

Her father is a pilot who keeps leaving for flights to places called "the edge of the map." When he is home, the house feels warm. When he leaves, it feels like it forgets how to breathe.

Her mother says everything is normal.
But normal starts to feel wrong in ways she cannot explain.

The fridge begins to smell strange.
Her brother stops talking.
And her tooth keeps refusing to fall out, as if it is waiting for something.

This is a notebook of ordinary days.

But something is wrong with the ordinary.