Mornings now, I shave the dusky down
moustache from my upper lip.
My skin, unused to the razor’s blading
glide, its scrape, breaks open
in tiny bumps. The way I’m casually broken
open all the time lately, my tears
unchanneled and at the smallest
provocation making glistening runnels
down cheeks that sprout a new meadow
of man-fuzz. Like the boys of my youth, 
I gangle, awkward, trip over my own
altered self, my loins alight with a strange, 
new life. Last week, in the produce aisle, a man
I’ve never been drawn to hugged me, 
his hands warm the way a pilot light
is warm, its staid flicker merely dependable
in the dusty window of a hot water heater,
but I danced to life like a kerosene
slick touched by the sweet carelessness
of a match and stood there, helplessly burning.