The Devil’s Candy

By Robert Beveridge

Copyright ©2025

Our second date. You buzzed me up

because I was early, you weren’t ready.

I came in and found myself

with a cat in my arms. Nuzzled her

for a minute. You headed off

towards the bedroom. Let me change

and we’ll be ready to go.

My mouth engaged, as it often does,

before I thought. Mind if I watch?

I winced. That could be

a relationship killer less than a week

after I finally worked up the courage

to ask you out the first time.

Instead, you shot

me a glance over your shoulder.

Not at all. What else could I do

but follow? I’d seen pictures

but the difference between the internet

and reality is sometimes an uncrossable gulf.

No hesitation, no coyness, you stripped

down to just panties, rummaged

in a laundry basket of clean clothes.

I took in, for the first time,

so many of the little things about you I still

find so beautiful—the curve of your back,

the tweak and poke of your auburn nipples,

the sharpness of your shoulder blades,

as if you were born with wings that had

absorbed back into your body,

the expanse of your nape as it slides

into shoulder (you didn’t tell me

until much later how popular

your collarbones used to be on certain

message boards), the muscle

and grip of your thighs. So many

details and they all seemed important

to drink in as deep as I could.

I can’t even imagine the expression

that must have been on my face.

Hunger must have played a part.

Incredulousness, perhaps, that someone

would share such magnificence

with a person they’d known in the flesh

for a matter of days. The deepest

gratitude I could then imagine.

Rapture must have played a part.

Awe. Probably awe—the same

I still feel when you change

in front of me every day.

After the movie, this time with my brain

fully engaged: I’d love to take you

back to my place instead.

Your response, less flirtatious

than matter-of-fact: We have time.

The same pragmatism that let you

allow me to see such perfection.

We did have time, of course,

and thousands of days later,

we still do.

About Robert Beveridge:

Robert Beveridge (he/him) makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry on unceded Mingo land (Akron, OH). He published his first poem in a non-vanity/non-school publication in November 1988, and it's been all downhill since. Recent/upcoming appearances in We Are the Weirdos, Bitter Melon, and Rough Diamond, among others.