Patch

Even his beard was tired, not growing more full but lean, like a tangle of milkweed suckling the last roots of a garden. He'd imagined the hair would grow soft with the passage of time, but it remained wiry, red curls probing out toward the world and introducing themselves to strangers. "People don't trust men with beards," his mother had once told him. "It's as if they have something to hide." But he didn't have anything to hide. No malicious little secrets kinetically waiting to destroy his social life. At least he didn't think so. He weaved his fingers through the tangle, tugged it between two fingers. He angled his chin upwards at the mirror. He thought of a carnivorous plant. A venus fly trap, pink and vaginal, trying to swallow his neck and head whole. To suckle them into its digestive juices. Finally, he took a pair of scissors to it, trimming the hair as close to the skin as possible. He cut too much, and it began to look patchy. Finally, he curled his fingers around a razor and scraped it off. When he lifted his face after, the skin still tingling and dripping with cold water, he thought he looked fatter. Fatter and younger.