razor raze i used to watch him shave. he would cover his face with oil and soap and water and make white foam disappear with slow, deliberate strokes, the same way he scraped ice from the windshield of a light blue van that somehow made it onto the market after a failed crash test. general motors gave it a family-friendly name and hoped for the best. no one who sat behind the wheel of that van ever died. i used to wish they would. the handle and the head did the work his pores wouldn't do on their own. what he cut away always grew back inside of a few days. i didn't know why he bothered. i always thought he would have grown a good beard. i wanted to taste the shaving cream. it looked like it would be sweet. like icing. like cold water pulled from the tap in my great grandmother's kitchen. i scraped the silver blade across the tip of my index finger and watched the pink flesh part and turn red. i wrapped my hand in the oversized t-shirt i was wearing and let the white fabric be my salve. and if the shirt still exists at the bottom of a box in a basement somewhere, right around the hemline is where you'll find a little bit of the fuel that makes me run, darker for having lived so long away from its wellspring, but no less vivid than it was the moment it left me. 220225 ... tender_square lia asked if i would shave her legs for her and i refused. “i read an interview with alicia silverstone in ‘seventeen’ where she said she’d let a friend shave her legs and she regretted it because she ended up with scars.” in the bathtub, i would lather my legs with my older sisters’ pink, frothy shave gel. take a lady bic with the protector on and drag it upwards, a soft snow pile around my kneecap. i wasn’t brave enough to use the blade. my hair was blonde anyway. in the locker room when we changed for gym, the girls bragged of shaving and training bras, wearing make-up and getting their periods. and i turned from their conversations to hide the shame of wearing my white cotton tank with a neckline of pink lilies, the undershirt of a child with nothing to show. pretending wasn’t enough. the removal of fair hair could make me a woman. addition by subtraction. the flecks of hair caught in the silver slats and i waved them loose in the water. porpoise skin i couldn’t stop touching afterward, my knees stinging with knicks, small ribbons of blood drifting in a pool of old cells and dirt. the hair grew back darker, thicker, like the old wives tale warned. and i was caught dulling razors that didn’t belong to me, reminded that i was too young for rites of adolescence. i covered my bare legs in gym with my arms when i sat cross-legged. a classmate pointed out the sprouts, laughed and called me hairy, cutting me down with a quick swipe. 220225 what's it to you? who go blather from