Four nights a week I come over to your house and we order
late night cheeseburgers and you put your head in my lap and complain about
your ex-girlfriend and then we switch and I put my head in your lap and
complain about my ex-boyfriends. Then after we eat our cheeseburgers (or
sometimes we eat a quart of Ben & Jerry's each) we put on a movie and watch
it and cuddle, and you are short and round and I am tall and slim but we make
it work. Then around three in the morning we start writing poetry for the next
three hours and pause to read the most beautiful parts of you complaining about
your ex-girlfriend or me complaining about my ex-boyfriends. I'm tired all day
after but I come back the next night anyway and the night after that and the
night after that. And I know you say you like girls who are cute and petite and
I know I say I like guys who are tall and elegant but I know that I, for one,
think about you naked. A lot.
Catherine Simpson,
a cellist who lives in Santa Barbara, has been previously published in the Big
River Poetry Review, Right Hand Pointing, Spectrum, Serving House Journal, This
Great Society, Four and Twenty Magazine, Step Away Magazine, and Into
the Teeth of the Wind.
