The life cycle of a tooth fairy

You think after twenty teeth
that tooth fairy is done with you?
On the day that you were born
the snowdrop, the tulip, the rose
bore a fairy,
your fairy,
some might say a guardian angel.
They learn just as you do.
Once you dispose of imagination,
drummed out of you by institutions,
the fairy is slumbering
until it feels passion.
That first person who broke you heart,
awoke the fairy.
When your brain went numb,
and your heart went cold-ish,
that was the fairy mending it.
When you felt pleasure at feeling nothing
when seeing the heartbreaker again,
that was the fairy’s reward.
The fairy sometimes takes a long time fixing things
as the brain and heart are intricate.
You feel your heart beating, your brain blurring,
that’s the fairy doing maintenance.
The fairy grows with you
and soon (with luck) you outgrow each other.
The fairy has taught you how to fix yourself
and so is obsolete to you
but not to the world.
From you, they have learned how to fix the fabric of the world,
and that is what they do.
Sewing, mending and rendering
the fabric of magic on which this world depends.

Andie Berryman believes that magical creatures are the same as us, always learning.