When a hammer strikes a set of teeth, the universe pauses for a brief, obscene moment to listen. It’s an honest sound — free of metaphor — the precise point where usefulness meets blasphemy.

First, the air tightens. Then the mouth — or what’s left of it — opens involuntarily, as if about to scream but choosing instead to confess. The hammer descends with the solemn boredom of a judge, and the tooth, poor fool, still believes firmness is a virtue.

The blow doesn’t hurt; it instructs. The enamel shatters with that crystalline tone reserved for things that once served to bite. Fragments scatter — each remembering its last meal, its last kiss, its final lie. Dental dust drifts through the air like a chalk prayer, while the hammer — simple, radiant in its function — stands impassive, content to have brought order to the maxillary chaos.

What follows isn’t destruction but revelation. The collapse of the bite is also the collapse of language: no one can say “no” anymore. And there, among the shards, it becomes clear that every form of beauty — like every form of justice — requires its instrument. A hammer, for instance. Or a truth too sharp to bear.