There's the son she knows.

The morning comes and there is her. She is there most mornings, sometimes solid and sometimes soft, but never real. I don't want to be awake but the garbage truck outside crows its terrible suburban alarm as it claws through the street.

Before I open my eyes I count the stairs to Mat's apartment through the sound her shoes made on the wet asphalt. One two three four five six open. I am in my bed with a bad taste in my mouth. I cannot recognize it but I know that it has been there before. Perhaps this is the way my parents' house tastes. Guilt, boredom, nostalgia perhaps. Definitely a strong dose of sour copper. I do not know.

This is my room. For the first time I look around. Sometime since this past Christmas my mother must have taken my posters down, which is fine. The walls are the same color and the windows are clean. My books are still on their shelves, which I am happy about. They haven't been touched. My alarm clock is still there. The hands still tick but the time lies.

I look for the time elsewhere but I left my phone in my truck. Without knowing the time I cannot find a reason to put my feet on the ground, but the strange familiarity of my old bed and old painted walls is not comfortable. I stretch and pull on my jeans with the bottoms wet and grey and gritty from the rain and the rooftop. I cuff them and put on a shirt.

In the mirror, I catch my face. I'd had no reason to shave for some time and a beard grew. A funeral is a reason to shave so I search for a razor. I find my father's in his bathroom, next to tweezers and a bottle of pills. I am going to read what's on the bottle but decide against it. The razor has my father's short hairs in between the blades. He claimed to have never had more than shadow on his face and was proud of this. Shaved every day of my adulthood he said. I wipe his grey hairs from the blade with my thumb. I lather up in my own bathroom. I need scissors to make it easier to shave but I don't want to look for them so I just hack through the hair with the razor. It hurts a bit but I manage to only cut myself twice.

In the mirror, I watch the blood pool into a drip and fall into the tangle of hairs and cream in the sink bowl. I hear my mother call my name from downstairs. I don't answer. As I am rinsing my face, I hear her come up the stairs to stand in the doorway.

"Ah, there's the son I know," she says. "I hardly recognized you with that beard."

I try to smile but I catch the way it looks in the mirror and I quickly stop it.