Georgie Brooke

Owed Summer

It is

smack dab in the pit of May.

I dream of

sky caught between shades of pink heat

and Fosters cans,

alongside a thin plastic crate of cherries,

you, eating their flesh to the stone,

then making a gun of your mouth,

my mouth silly under the crown of mindless yellow heat,

sticky with peach scented lip gloss.

And it felt like whole summers went like that,

perching

on the fire escapes of strange pubs between sets

wearing bare legs

looking down on streets all cigarettes and lip.

Now, we touch each other and prove that we’re still here.

My bedsores formed like braille-

a cipher, signifying that this creature was once me.

Rose water pools on windowsill,

an inside paradise of uninspiring prayers

I close my eyes, and wait

for shades of pink from the Summer sky,

shining red phosphene inside my eyelids.

I wrote ‘Owed Summer’ to remember what a Summer free of restrictions feels like, and how our generation is missing these shared experiences. It is also about how we grow, after living for so long without these experiences; touching friends, seeing live music, the pull of a communal pool of people. How we have to be patient and use this ‘inside’ time to rediscover ourselves, and  how we can grow from this, too. We have to learn a form of self-love that will allow us to resume our social lives without forgetting ourselves.

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Written by Georgie Brooke

Music and culture writer/Speaker of truths/Over sharer/Virgo (minus the practical thinking skills) 

Georgie is Mancunian poet. She is currently completing an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Manchester. Her hobbies include self-growth, creating wildly disorganised playlists and over-caffeinating herself. She shares her poetry on instagram: spenglerr_ and loves to collaborate. You can contact her here: georgie.brooke@postgrad.machester.ac.uk

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