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