You were salt and vinegar fingers. Feather light touches, a trail of heat, searing heat, enflaming. Bleeding red lips. Eyes sewn shut. Choking down a sound that rises from somewhere you weren’t sure existed. Learning contours like an equation. Sneaking touches in the car on the way home. Hands dancing around each other. A game, a game of pretend. Pretending like we have no idea what we’re doing. Pretending like we don’t risk everything for five minutes alone together. Me sitting on the sinks, you on the windowsill. Launching into a conversation we’ve picked apart at the seams, rehearsed until it fell apart. Not even knowing we liked it. The flushed cheeks, the shaking hands, the game of pretend. Not even knowing why we’re tangled up in each other’s honesty. Why one of us is locking the door, the other closing the blinds. Why we force ourselves closer, spurred on by some kind of desperation. Using the wrong words on purpose, falling into a well-practiced faux pas, making conversation without meaning so we get seconds more. Taking what we can get. Not thinking. Just touching. Making our numbered days feel like they’ll last forever until finally we run out. Tracing the same circles. Kissing the same lips. Wondering if this is really what I was waiting for. Knowing nothing will ever be quite like this again.
Katie Proctor is an LGBTQ+ poet from Yorkshire, England. She writes freeform poetry often regarding her experience with OCD and mental health issues. She currently writes for HEALer Mag as an Art Critic and thoroughly enjoys exploring ideas about healing and trauma through poetry. Outside writing, she is a student with a passion for literature, history and classics. You can find her on Twitter @katiiewrites and Instagram @katiieproctor.