I’d been chatting with a 25-year-old 
6-4, 160-pound twink on Grindr  

for several weeks, 
expecting nothing to come of it. 

But last Wednesday, 
both of us a bit nervous,  

we met at my place.  

* 

Fernado is physical perfection. 

No point describing him 
beyond the basic stats above  

(from Mexico, speaks English, Spanish and Italian,  
beautiful dark hair and eyes) 

because just substitute your 10 here 
to get the meaning. 
                                         Utter 
head-to-toe  
perfection,  

and he was kind, educated 
and did not waste time   

with banal social conventions.  

*  

We only met Wednesday and Thursday,  
he was on his way to the east coast for the first time,  

then back to Mexico to finish his Ph.D.  

*  

It’s not ideal to tell family and friends 
your favorite Christmas present.  

However, you can write it in poetry 
because everything put in poetry   

disappears.  

“You can have these,”  
he said on his way out for the last time,  

and gave me his white ankle socks (size 15  

Craig Cotter was born in 1960 in New York and has lived in California since 1986.  His poems have appeared in California Quarterly, Chiron Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Court Green, The Gay & Lesbian Review, Great Lakes Review, Hawai’i Review, & Tampa Review. His fourth book of poems, After Lunch with Frank O’Hara, is currently available on Amazon.   www.craigcotter.com