Split Tooth

Alpha finds out that the narrator kissed Best Boy, and she is angry. The narrator acts out in class to receive detention, hoping Alpha is gone by the time she leaves school. After detention, she sneaks out the back of the school and encounters Fox. He wants to spiritually transform her, but she is not ready. Fox leads her through a hole under the school and disappears. On the other side of the school, Alpha and her friends find the narrator. She runs, but someone throws a rock at her head, and she falls. The girls beat her up, spitting in her hair so that it freezes in the cold. When she gets home, her family is drunkenly partying in the living room. The narrator sees evil spirits in the room, “waiting to take over the drunken bodies” (114). She does not tell her parents what happened.

In a prose poem, the narrator wishes someone would take care of her heart. She longs to feel safe. An illustration of ice and a dark sky accompanies the poem.

The narrator returns to the sea and lies down on the ice. Her body temperature and heart rate drop. As her body becomes dormant, her spirit awakens. She splits her spirit from her body, promising her body that her spirit will return. Using only her spirit, the narrator slips into the water beneath the ice, planning to search for Sedna. She explores the bottom of the ocean, returning to her body when she feels it slipping away. Back in her body, she finds that the Northern Lights have descended on her while her spirit was away. The Northern Lights become a physical presence that enters the narrator’s body. She believes that she is going to die, but then the lights leave the narrator naked on the ice, “bleeding from every orifice” (121). When she drags herself home, she finds that she has been gone for 12 hours. She showers and finds a green, glowing residue on her body that “squirms like a larva” (122). 

In the poem “Misplaced,” the narrator describes being “impregnated with mourning” (123).

Weeks after the event with the Northern Lights, the narrator has not told anyone what happened. Her body has changed: She heals very quickly, her eczema and acne have cleared up, and she no longer needs glasses. Her eyes have shades of green in them, and she is slightly taller. She is also more in touch with her sexuality. The narrator, Best Boy, and some of their friends explore an abandoned ship from a European Arctic expedition. She wonders who the men on the ship were and why they called themselves “adventurers” when people have lived in the Arctic for millennia. She wonders why foreigners thought they had the right to tell her people how to live their lives.

A brief abstract poem describes lichen and contains a numbered list of items, events, and emotions. 

The narrator reflects on the cycles of life. She sees living beings not as individuals but as “a great accumulation of all that lived before” (130). She feels more alive after the event with the Northern Lights and enjoys her newfound abilities. She and Best Boy spend more time together. She is grateful for his friendship but knows she will never take another lover after the Northern Lights. When Alpha and her friends corner the narrator and try to beat her up, the narrator grabs Alpha by her scarf and suspends her in the air until she passes out. She and her friends never bother the narrator again.

An illustration of a small, run-down building with an all-terrain vehicle parked in front accompanies an untitled poem about sharpening claws and defending one’s children.

Summer arrives and the sun never sets. The narrator, Yellow Pants, and two other friends are in a small shed sharing a joint they stole from a drunk man. The narrator can smell fear, which inspires a feeling she calls “Spiritlust.” She focuses her attention on Yellow Pants, using the powers she gained during her experience with the Northern Lights to terrify him. He runs screaming from the shed and is never the same again. The narrator is not the same either: She feels more connected to the land, as though it can answer her existential questions about life and death.

The narrator has not had her period since her experience with the Northern Lights. She knows that she is pregnant with twins: a boy and a girl. She can speak to them through the spirit world. She sees her unborn children as her elders, her leaders, and her equals. She does not know what to tell her parents. Best Boy’s wise grandmother, Helen, invites the narrator to her tent for tea. The narrator believes Helen will help her.

The narrator swims in a lake and becomes very hungry and thirsty. She lets creatures like fish and shrimp swim into her womb for her unborn children to consume. She feels their happiness. Helen and the narrator spend more time together. They speak Inuktitut with one another so much that the narrator begins dreaming in the language. Her children become differentiated. The girl is “soft” while the boy has “harder edges and wants to throw stones” but protects his sister (144). The narrator knows that they are really one soul in two bodies. She thinks it would be better if they could merge into one being. 

The narrator no longer drinks, smokes, or uses drugs. When her parents realize that she is pregnant, she refuses to explain who the father is. The narrator’s father is furious. Her mother tries to be supportive, but the narrator hears her crying through the walls. They stop partying. The narrator knows she cannot win their love back but believes her babies will help heal the damage. 

An unnamed poem describes brushing and braiding someone’s hair. The speaker braids themself into the other person’s hair and gives them control.