Poetry by Katie Proctor

                ​deveion acker CC



You and Me, Summertime

When you hold me will it be like I dreamed it or something better?
We’re a household name, blue envelopes and writing paper, and
I think you’re pretty with the lights off because I like the way
it sounds when you tell me good morning. I see you in my dreams
with your glass skin in a violet haze screaming fuck the summer
heat and the bite of the meadow, the slats of the honeyed fence
that keeps your hand from mine. I want you every day, want to
call you mine and braid our lifelines, read your palm and say we’ll
live forever if you’re by my side, in my bed, my rainfall glowing glossy
and lucent. I guess we’re pretty in pink, indigo glitter and love
heart lips, because I said I would kiss you through the window of
the car I can’t drive and now you’re a part of me, I did your makeup
because you’re all eyeliner and bad news. You’re the best decision I
ever let myself make for grass stains and hay-fever romance, and
I promise I’ll keep the bruises like a love letter to July until I see
your face again and I can call you angel, sweet like lemons and jam.
When it’s winter we’ll be a gingerbread and cinnamon love, until the
tulips and the daffodils bloom. I’ll start again in March, ice cubes
in lemonade. I’ll make you a drink and say happy new year.

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Ante Meridiem

I woke up wrapped in white sheets with a ghost next to me, an
intangible obscenity that clings to me all over, dampens the
tissue-paper of my skin, gossamer and translucent, woven
from the silver of spider webs in the dew, ante meridiem. You
persist like the smell of smoke and fireworks splitting in my
stomach, ten fingers in my hair, your invisible five, the shadow
of a hand on mine and the body it grows from. You are a
poltergeist on fire and playing with it, making me want to drown
in something that tastes the way you do, every way, feverish and
lost and blooming. And I wish you were here when I’m like this,
insatiable and mouth dripping with honey, hold my hand, kiss
me before it all shatters. In the temporary oblivion and the
transitory quiet, you float, rising out of a vacant heart, the air
of a dream dissipating.

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Katie Proctor (they/them) is an 18 year old poet from Yorkshire, England. They write freeform poetry and prose typically regarding their experience with love, relationships and mental health. Their debut collection of poetry, Seasons, was published in 2020, and their sophomore collection A Desire for Disaster will be published later this year, both by Hedgehog Poetry. They are the editor-in-chief of celestite poetry, a journal of creative writing and non-fiction. They are currently on a gap year, and will be studying English and Related Literature at the University of York in 2022. You can find them on Twitter and Instagram @katiiewrites and online at katiiewrites.carrd.co.

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