Behind the bathroom door, I move as if
By rote, then stand, at last, before a glass
All fogged with steam–the shower's daily gift
That keeps me from my face. It comes to this
Each morning, but . . . from here on in, I'll cut
Not just my own, but someone else's cheek:
That stubbled skin I kissed when I was eight.
Its beard is mine now. Now no longer sleek
With boyhood's smooth, untroubled flesh, my jaw
Seems firmly set against my father's blade.
Each day, the mirror's foamed facade, scraped raw
And red, comes clearer from its masquerade
As someone else. He's doubled now. We trade
Our places, rinse and slap and towel down.
Now twenty-eight, his age when I was made,
I razor off a frowning, lathered clown
Whose throat is his. Our Slavic jowls and cheeks,
Inflected by an upper lip too thin
For shaving safely, wreak their havoc: nicks
And cuts we've learned to take upon the chin.
The two of us, who share a dimple now,
A pair of laugh lines, one deep philtrum, meet
Each morning, paint like mimes, and like mimes, saw
With single, silent, simple steel. We greet
The day in one another, realize
Our more-than-homely task, and know for good,
We need not ask what's in each other's eyes,
For here is where I've drawn my only blood.
By rote, then stand, at last, before a glass
All fogged with steam–the shower's daily gift
That keeps me from my face. It comes to this
Each morning, but . . . from here on in, I'll cut
Not just my own, but someone else's cheek:
That stubbled skin I kissed when I was eight.
Its beard is mine now. Now no longer sleek
With boyhood's smooth, untroubled flesh, my jaw
Seems firmly set against my father's blade.
Each day, the mirror's foamed facade, scraped raw
And red, comes clearer from its masquerade
As someone else. He's doubled now. We trade
Our places, rinse and slap and towel down.
Now twenty-eight, his age when I was made,
I razor off a frowning, lathered clown
Whose throat is his. Our Slavic jowls and cheeks,
Inflected by an upper lip too thin
For shaving safely, wreak their havoc: nicks
And cuts we've learned to take upon the chin.
The two of us, who share a dimple now,
A pair of laugh lines, one deep philtrum, meet
Each morning, paint like mimes, and like mimes, saw
With single, silent, simple steel. We greet
The day in one another, realize
Our more-than-homely task, and know for good,
We need not ask what's in each other's eyes,
For here is where I've drawn my only blood.
