i have been on testosterone
long enough to grow more of
a mustache than what my father
shamed me into waxing and
bleaching when i was a
middle schooler
him and i have been no contact
for much of my eighteenth year
(after he, like my mother, threw me out),
and so i ask a man that is not my father,
but felt like one for a time,
to teach me how to shave
he is patient with me,
handing toilet paper to blot at
the cut on my chin, and spends
so long rubbing beard oil into my
freshly shaven skin that his
wife, watching us from her spot leaning
against the bathroom doorjamb,
lightly scolds us for making us
late to dinner
and for a time,
i was known by them,
i was loved and seen,
and i saw them in turn
i still think of that
moment, a snapshot in the
back of my brain, like a picture
that curls at the edges from being
kept in my wallet too long
i miss the man i remember
him as, and wish it could have
ended differently
but this is one story that can’t
be rewritten, and i have no desire to try
and so i remember this man,
who felt like a father to me
for a time, with white-knuckles and
open arms in equal measures
and hope he remembers me
more fondly, than i now
remember him