And Two More Poems.

By KITTY HAWKINS.

◊

Cocoon

Nothing has changed in eight hours
except it’s dark and I’m writing.
The sea is in my cave-mouth, dew webbing around me.

When drowning, I’ve learned people experience ecstasy
and an elevated temperature.
Dates between diary entries reach like tendrils.

My parents are doing more old people things
now they’ve retired, my brother reports.
We’ll have a family meeting, after the birdbath is poured.

I’ll be careful not to let the water escape the discussion.
The gush would wash
what’s left of me towards the offshore rigs.

They’d find my body
the way a bird discovers a ripe caterpillar
before returning home to sleep.

◊

Testimonial 

Take this as a map of my home: the village trees lose their coats at winter’s door,
fields are uniform, the country lane contours like a nose toward the sea.
Nat brews coffee; he socks my feet in favourite pink,
mistakes Digestives for Rich Tea. When we count the things we want to be,
we spare three digits for different versions of ourselves—infant, alive, old.
So many stories to collect: the memory of April’s hot low tide,
watermelon cut like a bowl, Fitzlan Close for no other reason than its name.

◊

Sunsets in the West

On the furthest hill from Redlands
there’s a house the colour of sand.
You think it could be High Wickham.
I don’t think anything. High Wickham’s east.

The sand house glows when it rains,
a beacon balancing on a malachite forest,
steeped in a simple magnolia hue.

I slow on the pavement and imagine I’m there
where desperation isn’t so easily inhaled
and thistles escape the cracks in the porch.

Today you decide it’s the nature reserve
so we go, explore the trees and the sunset,
and you ask me for the truth, but I say
this bout of silence is the longest yet.

♦

Kitty Hawkins received an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, University of London, and won the Magdalena Young Poets Award in 2022. The previous year she received two prizes for her undergraduate poetry collection, Acoustics, at the University of Reading. Her poetry has appeared in Reading Poets: A New Anthology (2024) and in various online magazines, including Autofocus Lit Mag, The Canvas, The Fortnightly Review, RiversSide, and Seedling Poets. She is currently completing a first collection, as yet untitled, to be published by Two Rivers Press in 2025.