Dreams of Losing Your Teeth

There's something about metaphors:
          they fall out of places you wouldn't think

at first to look. The fleshy bed of your gums, 
          for instance. When you dream all your teeth 

have tumbled out of your mouth, you shouldn't 
          tell anyone about it until after you've thoroughly 

scrubbed yourself in the shower. Better yet, 
          stay home to lessen the likelihood of its prophecy 

of an early death from coming true. But why would a full 
          set of teeth fall out of your mouth in a dream? 

Do snails, which are reputed to have 25,000 teeth,
          ever dream of losing one or all of them? Over a life-

time, the average human supposedly produces 
          enough saliva to fill two swimming pools. Once, 

I saw a documentary in which a woman clenched the back
         of a chair in her mouth and spun it around and around
 
without breaking her jaw or losing her grip. At the end 
         of the sequence, she smiled for the camera with all her teeth.