Shaving with Adam
by LK
-Mosaic Literary Winner-
I.
He sits on the edge of the bathtub
sipping a beer, eyes on the razor
cradled in my hands.
III.
It wasn’t meant as an act of violence—
swaddling us in pink ribbons and roles,
but it stings all the same:
This is the moment I have dreamed of,
anticipating the click
of something falling into place.
The blade strides over my cheeks like a wildfire,
clearing away the traces of baby hair
as I look for a different face under my skin
I swallow pills every day to convince
my mind to stay inside my skin for a while longer
while Adam presses needles into his thighs
trying to shape his skin to the way his mind fits;
every day another tally mark against our erasure
every ‘lady’ ‘girl’ and ‘m’am’ like hail against
glow-stick bones that refuse to break.
(I always thought people would
understand me better if they knew
I was meant to have a five o’ clock shadow).
‘Keep your chin up,’ he says, setting down the
beer.
‘Tilt the razor so it doesn’t cut your throat,’
II.
My mother used to call my hair
a waterfall before I chopped it off,
trying to sever the baby girl she saw
from the tired kid she had
(and we fought like hell).
Now she carries around a picture of me,
face framed by the thick mane
of hair I used to have growing up,
a proper creature all its own
that gnawed at my sense of self
and suffocated shower drains.
Our mothers should meet—Adam’s and mine;
perhaps they’d bond over the common grief
of watching their daughters become strangers,
chests bound tight with polyester and dysphoria,
hips hidden behind practiced swagger
and strategic performance.
30
and I do,
paying homage to a body
I’m not sure I’ll ever call home.