Carious Lesion Scale (Or, the classification of dental cavities), by Verity Sayles

Verity Sayles is an essayist from Massachusetts. She received her MFA in nonfiction from Oregon State University where she discovered a love of pine trees. Her work appears in Under the Gum Tree, Commonline Journal, Burningword Literary Journal, and Dark Matter Journal. She can be reached at
Veritysayles.com or @saylesteam.

Writer on the essay:
No stranger to the dentist’s chair, I wanted to write a piece that felt like a growing cavity, and engaged the paradoxical ratio of decreasing enamel with increased pain. “Carious Lesion Scale” developed from a prompt given to me by the fabulous poet, Jen Richter. I love writing within existing constraints, especially those of a medical nature, and trying to push the emotional weight of an essay into clinical boundaries.