Christy

There’s a picture of her
from second grade, next to a
little boy, physically twice

as big as him. They’re both
designing with colored wooden
tiles a singular polygon.

The little boy’s shape is a dense
tiny mass of green and red tiles,
making a shape not unlike

a jagged edged doormat, or a
splotch of spinach stuck in one’s teeth.
Next to him Christy is lifting a

tile into place thoughtfully, her eyes
focused, her lower lip set, and her shape
on the table is a bursting

sunflower of yellow pentagons,
green rhombuses, blue squares, spangled,
large, unabashed.

I showed this photograph to
her once and said, “Christy, this is
who you were, back then:

you were untroubled by the
fact that you were, quite naturally,
bigger than everyone else.”

Catherine Simpson is a cellist who lives in Santa Barbara. She has been previously published in Big River Poetry Review, Right Hand Pointing, Spectrum, Step Away Magazine, Into the Teeth of the Wind, Poydras Review, and Splash of Red.