One day he will come into the bathroom
to watch you use the blade. And at five
or six or however old he still won't have
the right words, but what he'll be looking for
is the truth of his future face scraped clean
or shaped by beard.  He'll want admittance
to the ritual and he will stand and stare at the wet
edge of the Ewek & Son Sexto©Blade flush
against your skin.
'Daddy, what's that? ' he'll say.
'Straight razor, son, ' you'll tell him
as you sweep the steel of your father's blade
through the lather covering your jugular vein.
'It takes the shadow off my face.'
'But where does the shadow come from? '
As usual, he'll want the answers to everything
years too soon.  Say nothing.  He must learn
the rest in the way you strop the razor,
in the tone of the cold water thrown against
your face, in the damp towel and how you
consider yourself at the mirror before
tousling his hair and walking away
leaving him to write his own future in the mystery
of a fogged mirror or the sting of styptic pencil
punctuated by the blotting shreds of tissue
torn to stem the inevitable consequences
of a young man's desires grown then cut
to fall with the thin hairs of his first shave.