It was in Paris where I broke my tooth, the lower left second molar, while chewing the bread with the engraved cursive P upon its breast. It was our first trip together as adults. The laugh lines were settling in.

We had woken up early to walk there in the rain. I liked the unevenness of the cobblestone, how I tripped at almost every step and how loud the cars sounded as they approached. We walked in the rain.

The woman at the counter of the shop didn’t look at you. The woman at the counter asked if I wanted the whole loaf or the half, she directed the question at me as if she knew I would pay. I was distracted by her immediate knowledge of us, and by the smell of the dough rising out of sight, which reminded me of my father’s calloused hands, how they could be abrupt, but also subtle. He used the abrupt hands or the subtle hands to make gnocchi.

I didn’t understand her French, so she made wide shapes, and then I understood but could not decide between the two choices, the whole or the half, and you didn’t help, so I told her yes, oui, the whole loaf, and made a circular shape with my fingertips. I carried it home, you were upset at the price of the whole loaf, so your hands were free to swing at your sides, the bread weighed one kilogram. The soft rain wet our hair.

3.

My hair is surrendering. The strands remain in whatever position they are left in: folded under the tension of an elastic band, or the shape of a pillow, or a hat, or the short fingers of someone new. The surrendering hair is curly and dark, like a lake that will never drain into another body.

Your hair might be more voluminous than mine, perhaps with a thin line of gray around the arch, it might still smell the same and your hair might move like it used to.

4.

Dermatophagia: from the Greek: skin, eating. The habit or compulsion of eating, biting, or enjoying one’s own skin, most commonly on the fingers. They were often waiting near your lips, your long fingers. In any photo where you faced the camera there would be your hairline, the pupils, the curved nose, hands, hands, a birthmark, and the one finger between your lips as if amputated, the long neck.

You would grab all the skin available, speaking between bites, mouthfuls of it, skinning. Teeth gnawing, lips twisted to the left or to the right. The inside of the mouth would be marked with the missing skin, and you would run your tongue against it sometimes. From the outside it looked like a wave, and your cuticles were marked red.

5.

To add or subtract or multiply means to count in another language.

6.