Apple from the tree

My mother wears a singular tooth in her  gummy dentures
And keeps it hydrated in a transparent heart 
And it sticks an accusing point towards me as a magnetised needle
Drifts towards a makeshift northwards home.
You, it juts out a provocative chin, have only just noticed the 
Creep of age that changed my mother’s face and her steady hands. 

She whistles when she laughs through the undentured smile.
In such strange ways, the apple that fell from the tree
Has the same half-moon of bite marks — I touched my tongue
To the gap in my smile where the baby crown fell off and
The dormant adult tooth throbs like a creature trying to
Break out of the egg shell. How strange we mirror
Our gap-toothed smiles as she steps away as I step 

Forward, a parallel shift as I become more like her
And she, less like herself.