The sun runs a comb through my slippery-smooth face

as I pass under a bird leaping from the roof of a school

on my way to the shop where you sell mustache combs.

I remember Javier Marias, who loved cigarettes,

and cross him off the list of things to bring up.

I don’t think he’d really be your thing, but maybe.

To speak in the manner I’m thinking in, the door to your shop

is right there and maybe brown. You smile in a formal manner

like I’m a wealthy customer and this is your job.

Maybe for me you’re defined by what I don’t know

or maybe that’s the air that surrounds your garden

bearing its ingredient. The whole neighborhood is asleep

under morning glory. I wonder why you greeted me like that,

but my guess is like an electrical outlet asleep or a pool

asleep at the limit of a town at the limit of childhood.

You show me a tube of jelly with fake mahogany accents

and explain how it’s used for dissolving a man’s hair.

I’m honestly interested in that. I ask a question.

Have all our conversations so far been in dreams?

You ask me why I came to Mustache Topic

since I’m wearing a dress and you usually

know what’s up. It’s a gift, I say empty-handed,

then I look around the room for a gift.

For my grandfather, I say. But my grandfather

was born with alopecia universalis,

a name that’s sweet to some, because it greets you

early on the way to angelic baldness.

You sell me a mustache made of human hair

mounted on cardboard. I part the hairs. I see

a sheet of paper folded underneath. I unfold it.

A map in black ink of the surface of a star.