Sometimes all it takes is the right motivation. Lewis Carroll was motivated to do word puzzles, for instance. What will our           ?

The sink, bare but for the debris of a few months of habitudes, stared back at him, dumb and silent. Skin flake and whisker, maybe an eyelash or back hair, long glued to soapy water stains on the fake chrome. The sink’s inside Rob had wiped out on occasion with a kleenex, though less often a two-inch perimeter around it. And that thin gap between the faucet and the beveled molding behind it? A growing crust of amalgamated human chaff and rust. Rob looked at his toothbrush, wondering if it might work as a tool to get back in there and scrub. . . . But first, he
shaved. 

Because this was it, he had decided. This was the day to get it all done, to wipe away the stagnation, to–as they say on the talk shows–“move on” with life. Why he had waited so long was irrelevant now, now at the start of a new year, now at a moment when the sun pretended a promise through the bathroom window. “Face the world,” he heard himself mumble with a degree of resolution. Well, at least a face to the world. He’d walk around the block, maybe stop at the liquor store or the Coney Island. A real patty melt or even a gyro, take-out. Later, maybe, he would stop his grocery deliveries. Test the waters. Work in steps. Decide carefully what he
shared.

A good day, he decided. A shift, a movement to his next life. And the adventure of it! He could not possibly predict now who he would become, only that watching his thumb press across that stray glop of Gillette and thus reveal a little more blue in the vanity countertop . . . exhilarated. He imagined their surprise. Rob’s eyes re-focused on his background reflected in the mirror, the razor now a blur against his cheek: door with cracked frame, short filmy-white hallway, drab bedroom beyond. Nothing really there that never was before. Silent as porcelain. No matter. He knew his imagination of witnesses here was nonsense. Just fancy. But still, razor in hand, he
stared.

“Silent as porcelain. No matter.“

Then turned afresh to his work. He envisioned the move from pause to purpose, hermit to harbinger, and ooh, did that word feel good! And what would he announce, proclaim? Only—no hugely—that he was outdoors again, and this soon-to-be-cleaned face would convince them not to be so anxious, after all. See? Nothing to see here! And naturally, as he packed away a coney dog and sipped a Coke—even at a booth, maybe—they could never conceive him. He could watch the world, make mental notes, learn of them their interest in him. Let that information serve him, build his next steps. After all, tit for tat. His face against the world of faces, smiling to their smiles, “Good how about you” in reply, a mirror but focused on the surrounds. All carefully
stored.

Rob’s hand stopped, left cheek cooling under the foam, the right a touch inflamed, but nothing a little Aqua Velva couldn’t fix. He could see it there, too, written on his half-finished face: the recluse and the rock star, the I and the intention, the secret and the sham. His left belied his right; though, in the mirror, which was true? As the sun shifted its perspective, a slice of light angled downward onto the toilet. On the countertop, a thicker film of detritus defined just two inches from the sink’s diameter. On his twin blades, a bared threat. Barriers, edges, waters and coastline, frames and cracks, last night and this morning, pledges and failures, half-shorn, half-
shored.

He wiped the corners of his eyes with his wrist, never releasing the crusting blades. Realized his left hand had grown white-knuckled on the counter edge to keep him standing. Didn’t they know? Hadn’t he always realized? And why was this morning any different? What point this ritual? Rob knew that whatever he revealed, it would not satisfy. And whatever he kept: a secret
showed.

The foam collapses against his cheek, crisps upon the razor blades. Long ago, the slitted eyes of the sun shut upon the window glass. No one watches him here, below the mirror’s dim view. Crouched and quiet, ceramic in volume. We breathe and slowly gather dust upon our skins.
Shadowed.