Hooligan Mag Issue #20

Valentine's Day

by Nick Rossi You stay curled undercover while I’m all blinking eyes and waking limbs tingling in the chill of the morning light and you don’t even stir as I pull on a pair of sweatpants and tuck the cuffs into sneakers so I don’t have to sit on the edge of the bed to put socks on and disturb your cherubic sleep.

I brew a pot of coffee and pour half out for myself to drink as I complete my routine of Saturday tasks tedious and time-consuming before you wake up and ask if I want to shower first but instead of doing laundry I’m looking out the back door of my apartment thinking about the time we ran around the pond laughing loudly until my mom picked us up and the time we sat on the tennis court and you cried because I said I didn’t think I loved you anymore because I didn’t think I loved myself anymore and the time we sat in the woods next to the church off Route 30 and called it our “secret spot” even though we could see and hear the passing traffic and the night we held each other and wept after you made the phone call and found out it was true