Winners Circle
Please join us in celebrating our 2022 contest winners. We are honored to share their poetry and their stories.
POETRY
OUR 2026 WINNERS
First Place
Customs Declaration
By Paulina Lam Esparza
Customs Declaration
by Paulina Lam Esparza
At the border they ask
what I am bringing with me.
I say nothing to declare
and hand over my name.
In English, I make myself small —
round my vowels,
attach apologies to sentences
before they are requested.
In Spanish, I arrive without permission.
My hands talk first.
My body remembers things
my mouth was trained to forget.
In Māori, I listen.
The land answers only
if I say it right.
When I don’t, it stays silent.
None of these selves are false.
Each one survives
in a different line.
I have lived in three countries.
Each one kept a version of me —
left behind like shoes
they don’t let you past the door with,
like skin removed and recorded
as excess.
Sometimes I think the real me
is still waiting
between arrivals and departures,
holding a passport stamped
TEMPORARY
until the ink bleeds through the page.
Everywhere I go, someone asks for proof:
that I belong,
that I sound right,
that I deserve the life
I am trying to stand inside.
Impostor is the language
no one teaches you,
but everyone expects you to speak.
I am fluent.
Still, I move forward.
Through rooms that doubt me.
Across thresholds that ask
what I plan to become.
If I am still here,
it is because I keep crossing.
And I stay
knowing that staying
always costs something.
Second Place
Willow Tree
By Allie Frost
Willow Tree
by Allie Frost
in my next life, I’d like to be a lovely weeping willow tree,
with slender branches sweeping low, ghostlike in the moon’s pale glow.
my roots shall coil underneath a wild and wide open heath,
unblemished by mere mortal hands, the fairest tree in all the lands.
perhaps, instead, I’ll give my shade within a lush and hidden glade,
which only gentle hearts may find to leave the bitter world behind.
no spade shall wrench me from the ground, and ever shall my soul be bound,
a tranquil beacon so serene, resplendent as a sylvan queen!
but in the winter I will sleep, and lose myself in dreams so deep,
roused by the dewy kiss of spring when green buds stir, and sparrows sing.
all fierce and gentle beasts shall be my favorite source of company,
for tender hearts and fangs that bite have earned their moment of respite.
my branches offer dappled cover while the river whispers like a lover,
to lonely souls who seek to rest from the burdens of their lifelong quest.
within my blossom barricade, no one shall ever feel afraid,
a haven, safe and tucked away, to keep all monstrous thoughts away,
when all my fleeting friends have left, I will not find myself bereft,
for sun, and sky, and mossy stone, ensure I’ll never be alone.
I’ll revel in the wind’s caress, but storms shall bring me no distress,
I’ll stand steadfast through any strife, a blessed and enduring life.
and should I fall to some cruel blade or illness cause me to degrade,
I shall persist in memory, enshrined for all eternity,
in hearts of weary wanderers, and bright-eyed, eager ponderers,
who stole a moment at my feet, beneath my flowers, soft and sweet.
and that, I think, could be a fate that’s free from cruelty and hate,
so when I’ve lived my whole life through, my spirit can be born anew,
in that next life, some piece of me will linger on in harmony,
content to stand, and simply be, a lovely weeping willow tree.
Third Place
Paper Keys
By Anh Nguyen
Paper Keys
by Anh Nguyen
Some nights our table held more worries than food,
and a piano was beyond our reach.
Yet every evening,
I imagined my fingers finding their place
on keys I did not have.
Then one day,
my aunt made room for me in her children’s piano lessons.
Even when rain swept through the streets,
I walked through the storm to arrive on time.
My clothes clung to me, heavy with rain,
while the music pulled me forward.
My teacher often scolded me for falling behind,
never knowing there was no piano waiting for me at home.
So I drew keys on a sheet of paper
and traced them with my fingertips,
wearing grooves into the page
while music lived only in my imagination.
When I finally told him,
he understood.
As the day I set out on my own drew near,
every paycheck had a destination.
When I received my first steady paycheck,
I spent an entire month’s salary on a piano.
Years later,
it still stands in the corner of my room.
Whenever I look at it,
I think of the little girl
who traced piano keys on a sheet of paper.
She could not touch a real piano then,
but the music had already found her.
WINNERS
About Paulina, Allie & Anh
first place winner
Paulina Lam Esparza
Paulina Lam Esparza is a Mexican writer and designer, currently living in New Zealand. Her work explores identity, memory, and belonging across languages, borders, and cultures. With a background in architecture and visual design, she approaches writing as both structure and space, crafting work that examines the ways we carry places, histories, and versions of ourselves. She is the author of the memoir I Don’t Want to Forget This, published in 2025, and the second-place winner of the 2025 One Page Poetry contest.
I have lived between places, languages, and versions of myself. Poetry doesn’t ask me to choose between them. It lets them all speak.
second place winner
Allie Frost
Allie Frost is a writer and award-winning poet based in south-central Pennsylvania. Her work explores emotion, identity, nature, and self-reflection—often with a touch of whimsy or a fantastical edge. She finds inspiration by examining the ordinary through an extraordinary lens; a simple stroll through an autumn forest can become a magical, daring adventure! She has previously released a young-adult novel titled I’m With You and is currently working on a chapbook manuscript focused on the subversion and re-examination of fairytale tropes.
Poetry is an art that allows for expression in a manner that isn’t always direct—a way to confess, or share vulnerabilities that will resonate in the hearts of others. It gives new life to feelings I cannot always speak aloud.
third place winner
Anh Nguyen
Anh Nguyen grew up in a peaceful town in Vietnam and now lives with her family in Massachusetts. Her love for poetry began at ten, inspired by Hàn Mặc Tử, a celebrated Vietnamese Catholic poet, and her mother, a gifted writer who set aside her dreams for family, yet believed her daughter would carry them forward. For Anh, poetry is a cherished passion where memories and heartfelt emotions find their voice. Her writing reflects hope, perseverance, and the quiet strength found in life’s simplest moments, honoring dreams that live on through love and faith.
In the silence, I learned that even the smallest dreams can create the most beautiful music.
POETRY
OUR 2026 Honorable Mentions
This Poem, Not About Blue Whales
By Valentina Gnup
This Poem, Not About Blue Whales
by Valentina Gnup
Begins and ends with blue whales,
their 200-ton bodies, their Chevrolet-sized hearts.
You could stand up inside a blue whale’s heart.
They’re the largest creatures that ever lived on Earth
and the loudest. They can hear each other’s
low moans a thousand miles away.
Blue whales sing to know they aren’t alone,
like Charles Ross, the artist who fell in love
with the night sky. He spent five decades
in the desert, building a tower to feel closer
to the North Star. Charles is eighty-eight,
his tower is almost finished. He said,
you have to go in to go out. For five years,
I loved someone. I built him a tower of forty two
thousand seven hundred and twenty hours.
We swam in different oceans. Through whale song
and cold, cold waters, we carried each other
like starlight, like grief.
Long Distance Status Report
by Danie Shokoohi
Long Distance Status Report
by Danie Shokoohi
Trump got re-elected but I only stopped eating
when you didn’t come home from Morocco. Every half hour
my phone breaks the news about Iran. It’s all bad.
My calls don’t connect. You ask if I’m okay, and I change
the subject. California is still burning. I live
in France now, but I still smell the smoke.
Every cookie in the snack aisle reminds me
I don’t need to buy you stroopwafels this week. I delete
the news apps from my phone; articles find me anyway.
I say, home misses you, because I can’t say the closet
no longer smells like your cologne. Planes collide
mid-air, but I dream of the airport and its soggy paper
cups. The government announces new, pointless tariffs.
I calculate the cost of bringing you home, and apply
for another ten jobs. I cannot fix this. An executive order
de-genders me. Guantanamo is open again. I wonder
if this is why geese migrate, if I could learn yet another language.
My mother reminds me to file my US taxes. My visa came easy
for France because I was born American. They still haven’t let you out
of Morocco. In French class, everyone calls me American, the first time
anyone ever has named me that half. I miss your accent on my name.
Our studio has gained 10 square meters since January. I’ve lost
7 lbs. China searches for water on the moon. I pick through
the juice bottles, the crate of strawberries in the fridge.
I promised you I’d make sure this never happened,
but I can’t even stop the gray mold from sprouting along
the porch door or the orange one spreading in the shower.
Trump vows to make American schools patriotic again.
We’ll never make a home in my country, and I can’t dream
your way into a residence card. You promise me it’ll all work out
but not yet, not today. I keep my ringer on, wait for news,
then keep waiting. There is a trash pile the size of Texas
floating around the Pacific. I miss washing your dishes.
I add chicken to the grocery list for the day you come home.
Trust the Thing that Your Heart Wants
by Shirley Jones Luke
Trust the Thing that Your Heart Wants
by Shirley Jones Luke
Trust is not easily given in this world,
Yet that is what your heart wants
you to do. Take that risk. Make
the leap of faith. All the motivational
cliches pushing you over the edge.
Desire has its own compass,
a small needle trembling beneath the ribs,
pointing toward the door you keep walking past,
the unopened notebook, the packed suitcase,
the name of the dream you whisper only to yourself.
There will be voices shaped like fences,
hands offering caution when you need courage,
clocks reminding you how much time has passed.
Still, the heart keeps knocking,
louder and louder against its cage.
An urgent sound, remembering what fear
wants you to forget – your drive to create the life that you want.
Some hungers do not leave because they are meant to lead.
So trust what keeps returning.
Lift it carefully from beneath the doubt.
Carry it into daylight like a seed in your palm.
Give it water, work, a room of its own.
The life you want may not arrive whole;
it may come as one open door, one brave yes,
one morning when your feet finally follow your longing.
Grey, the Color I Called Home
by John Doherty
Grey, the Color I Called Home
by John Doherty
They say grey is the color of rain,
Of storms that linger too long,
In places sunlight forgets.
Grey was never sorrowful to me.
Even when the sky wore its dull wool coat,
The sun still found us,
Threading its golden beams through the clouds,
Proving hope has always known how to slip through the smallest seams,
Reaching us with a tenderness even the heaviest days could not keep away.
Grey was refuge.
Grey was the gentleness of the blankets wrapped around us in bed,
The softness of worn pillows that remembered the shape of our laughter,
And the quiet promises hidden between grey cotton sheets,
Where the world could wait for us until morning.
Grey never meant loneliness.
Grey became the color of your arrival.
Your Volkswagen rolling into the driveway,
Painted in that quiet shade,
It was never just another car.
It was a lighthouse.
A heartbeat with headlights.
I illuminated the moment I caught a glimpse of that familiar color,
A promise that the waiting was over.
Grey meant you’re home.
It meant exhaling after holding my breath all day long to see you.
It meant another evening stitched together,
A shared silence with warm hands and work day conversations.
A color that made time forget to move.
But colors are strange things.
They keep their names while changing their meanings.
Now my eyes catch every grey Volkswagen slipping through traffic,
And for one impossible heartbeat my soul mistakes memory for hope.
Every time, the illusion passes.
Someone else drives away,
And I’m left sitting at another red light,
Between what was and what never came to be.
Grey no longer gathers the warmth of blankets.
It no longer carries sunlight through heavy clouds.
It no longer announces that you’re almost home.
Now it drifts through my days like smoke,
Recognizable, untouchable, already disappearing.
And perhaps, that is the cruelest thing about memory.
It doesn’t steal the color.
It leaves the color behind and takes the light with it.
POETRY
PAST WINNERS
2025
First Place
América Latina
By Alexis Valle
América Latina
by Alexis Valle
I am Latin America.
The continent they carved with knives,
the body they stitched with barbed wire,
the song they tried to mute with gunpowder and chains.
I am the ash of burned villages,
and the seed that sprouted in that ash.
I am every massacre remembered in silence,
and every silence broken by drums.
You thought we would stay ghosts,
but we walk—barefoot, bleeding, unbroken.
You came with ships and hunger,
with greed heavy in your hands.
You thought the land was yours to plunder,
but the land remembers who her children are.
You thought gold was god—
we knew better.
Our gods live in rivers and mountains,
in jaguars and in stars,
in grandmothers’ kitchens and children’s eyes.
You poisoned the rivers.
We made the rivers sing again.
You cut down the forests.
We planted the forests back.
You built walls.
We tore them down with our bodies,
and if we fall, we rise again,
because the soil always pushes up new roots.
You called us savages,
but you feared our wisdom.
You called us slaves,
but you trembled at our rebellions.
You called us immigrants,
but we have always been here—
our bones older than your borders,
our bloodlines written in the stone.
We are the workers bent over your fields,
the mothers raising nations from scraps,
the children you tried to disappear,
the fighters you tried to bury.
We bloom in the shadows,
we multiply in the cracks of your empire.
Understand this:
you cannot own us.
Not our music, not our food, not our words,
not our saints or our sinners,
not our land, not our blood.
You take and take,
and we still remain,
singing in Spanish, in Portuguese, in Quechua, in Guaraní,
singing in the heartbeat of drums older than your maps.
We are the machetes in the cane fields,
the fists in the plazas,
the pens writing stories that outlive your headlines.
We are resistance dressed in every color.
We are survival carved into our DNA.
Try to erase us, and we only grow louder.
Try to bury us, and we only rise stronger.
Try to silence us, and we only sing harder.
We are Latin America.
We are unkillable.
We are the thunder before the storm,
the fire that leaps from ember to blaze.
We are the children of the sun and the night.
And we do not die easy.
Second Place
Brown Beauty
By Paulina Lam Esparza
Brown Beauty
by Paulina Lam Esparza
They said white was light,
was right, was beautiful.
They taught me beauty meant fading—
blonde like god-light,
skin like untouched snow,
bodies soft enough to vanish.
And me—
sun-scorched child,
mud on my knees,
hair thick as questions,
praying to be less seen.
But I remember now—
not a lesson,
a pulse.
My skin: earth-warm,
packed with maíz,
ash from grandmothers
who danced barefoot
on burning stone
and laughed like thunder.
My eyes: not ocean,
but soil—rich, dark,
laced with gold,
where roots don’t ask
permission to grow.
Her hair may gleam like bleached silk—
mine is constellation-black,
braided sky,
the kind of night
you get lost in on purpose.
And this body—
not made to dissolve.
It bends like riverbanks,
rises like hills
that never learned how to bow.
I carry my people’s nose,
my people’s lips,
my people’s weight—
and I wear it like armor.
No mirror made for someone else
gets to rewrite what I already am.
Third Place
Before the World Named
Me Mother
By Alexandra Giffin
Before the World Named Me Mother
by Alexandra Giffin
My body unfurls like earth—
soft with newness,
my skin as thin as petals,
as if I’ve just been born.
I bleed quietly
into the morning—
the ache of becoming
and unbecoming,
like cut stems
still thirsting
for their roots.
September came and drenched
my lips in honey
from flowers that bloomed
through a season of rage—
the kind that takes your breath away.
Love growing thicker than blood,
leaving its mark in every crease.
Don’t just buy me flowers.
Bottle time
so it can live beyond memory—
so the scent of now
might still cling
to what’s left of me
in a decade,
in a daughter,
in the dust.
Fill the air with perfume,
as if love itself
had opened its throat
and breathed.
Let this be what is held—
the way my body remembers
every hour of every day,
the headiness of lilacs lingering
at the mouth of spring,
forget-me-nots pressed between pages,
as if I could ever forget
this belonging,
this becoming,
that began
long before the world
remembered to name me
Mother.
2024
First Place
Bridge Over A Bone River
By Lollie Butler
Bridge Over A Bone River
by Lollie Butler
In a border town built on drought and tourista dollars,
I walk through stalls of silver and tequila
while along la frontera,
two men and a woman like flat, handcuffed.
One will not live to be deported.
Crossing this “bridge over a bone river”,
each became a Christo, carrying the cross of his own body.
In the end, God became a tree, a lizard or a cloud.
When the sun over Sonora hammers,
every living thing is pummeled down into the earth
where it waits for nightfall to rise and howl.
This is a siesta town but it is my country north of here
sleeps. Under our eyes, the nameless dead collect.
We will awaken when a ‘migra’s rifle fires
or when the ghost of compassion returns to ask
what we’ve done with our inheritance.
One wears a ragged shirt, the other a baseball cap
and the woman ears a crucifix around her neck.
I might forget them
had I not seen their faces as I drive north toward home,
silver bangles cold against my wrists.
Second Place
Instead of Visiting You in the
Memory Center
By Chelsea Kerwin
Instead of Visiting You in the Memory Center
by Chelsea Kerwin
I vacuumed, watered the plants, grocery shopped,
worked weekends for time and a half pay. I walked
the dog until he started limping, took him to two vets,
purchased him an orthopedic bed with oversized bolsters.
No one used the word degenerative, but the cabinets
filled with pain pills and peanut butter. I moved in with
the man I want to spend my life with, he taught me
how to use his record player, how the needle recreates
the song by soaring over deviations etched in the vinyl.
We people-watched at the festival, I bought a flower crown,
the mead and Shakespeare made the world spin.
I read a book full of rotting snow and frozen-shut eyes,
outside a blizzard, inside Ares staring out the window.
I decorated the townhouse with gnomes and fairy lights,
travelled to Italy, got engaged on a cliffside in Sorrento,
ranked wedding venues all over Maryland. We drove out
to Massapequa for grandma’s funeral, I made a speech
in your place. I told everyone over and over you were ok,
you were comfortable, happy. Her death couldn’t touch you.
I stayed with mom after her surgery, took out her trash,
washed her hair in the kitchen sink, filled her birdfeeder.
I made a photo album of our last family trip to Alaska.
In my favorite, a small figure snaps a picture of a mountain.
I put a broken record back in its sleeve. I kissed my good
boy goodbye between two farewell shots at the final vet.
I smoked pot and watched black and white movies,
I searched the basement for mold and mildew, cried
and journaled and didn’t even bother railing at God.
I slept in and made love to my fiancée. On karaoke night
I sang Sister Golden Hair and Love is a Rose. I ate mushrooms
and visited you astrally. You were alright without me. Why not?
Didn’t I live as you taught me? If guiltily, if sometimes low,
I still caught the occasional sunset, stepped out into several
warm weather rainstorms, I cooked crispy skin chicken thighs
and danced like a jackass in the kitchen to our favorite songs.
Third Place
I Tell the Ocean
By Hayden Park
I Tell the Ocean by Hayden Park
by Hayden Park
I tell the ocean the things I used to tell you, these
lulling waves that wash my soul clean of the
worries that always whisper at my knees, my
fingers, the parts of my body that go untouched,
and I’ll make do with the sand, instead of your touch
that I craved so much. Sitting on the rocks like
some expired sunrise, today, I’ll tell the ocean
everything I used to tell you yesterday, all the things
I missed so much. I hope those crashing waves
will remind me of all that old bitter pessimism, like
kites on the horizon, so wonderfully far away, so far
even if I close my eyes I’ll never see them again.
I tell my violin the things I used to tell you. While
playing the melancholy lines, I leaned in, and,
sotto voce, my bow told me to sever the ties that held me
like a vice to your heart. The melodies lilted like the
morning, and I realized I’d been waiting for something
that would have burnt me like cold ashes biting ice
over long-cremated hope. When my violin speaks to me,
I realize it’s my own voice, echoing inside all this
ancient wood. The Plowden del Gesù was made from
old-world tonewood, and now I breathe in that old
Cremonian air, the faint pencil tracings, measurements
like a tailor around my breast. Your touch is like this
one, with its secrets held in the intense varnish, and
I wonder how your arms will feel around my waist.
I’ll tell you the things I used to keep to myself. I
will be the first by your bedside, reciting stories
that are more than fiction. In our memories, we lived
so vividly and laughed like there was everything to
live for. I want to jump off this waterfall with you
and slide down because that silent rain can. I
wonder if it’s just the drizzle collecting on the
sidewalk, dappling like a forest floor, or tears,
like the drizzle on your face falling from windows
I left open. I didn’t rush to close them this time,
not wanting to miss that cool mist through the screen
on my cheek. And I wanted to hear the sky bleed
to remind me even heaven has wounds like mine.
2023
First Place
This Is Not America
By Raya Yarbrough
This Is Not America
by Raya Yarbrough
This is not America,
this is twisted wood in sand.
This is 10 million years
in this stone, in my hand.
This is the dirt beneath the factory.
Dirt beneath the church.
Dirt which holds, refractory
to governmental girth.
We drive and we stride
and we fall and we ride
without thought,
on the crumbled blood of mountains.
But this is not America,
these are fathoms and tides.
These are homes of loons and otters
only human hands divide.
This is the hiss of reeds
a sea above a sea,
an old spiritual, moaning,
in the language of the Hickory.
From ancient river spines
boils brine from the fault,
and we have forgotten ourselves,
as the children of salt.
But this is not America,
this is 5:09 pm
and the cobweb in the window
has caught fire again
in the lift of summer’s nothings,
spectral breaths which lift the weave
to breathe through phantom tendons
on the edge of this eve.
Now the wind chimes, now a shadow
following the ring,
none of these have ever been at war
with anything.
I call to this land
by the name given to it
by the Bear and the Orca,
by the fox and the crow.
The name we can hold in our hands
in the driftwood
but we can never know.
Second Place
Sahara
By Cassie Lipton
Sahara
by Cassie Lipton
One day, my body
will not remember it’s anger
the way the Sahara
does not remember
it was once ocean.
One day, the seasickness
will become less violent,
the waves less treacherous,
as drop by drop you drain
from the space I’ve left open.
One day, I will step out
and the water will be ankle-deep.
Your memory is sea salt
on my face and in my hair
but drawing is no danger
One day, I will lay on the damp
sand, soft and pliable
and build castles of everything
I have become without you,
when I’ve washed away my anger.
And in a thousand years,
I will lie on the dunes
and feel the dry heat on my back
and it will be
as if you were
nothing.
Third Place
Elemental
By Jenna Martinez
Elemental
by Jenna Martinez
Aire
at eighteen, my mother runs away
to the border to marry my father.
the air that carries her to Laredo
seeps into the seeds of me.
I bloom into a small tornado.
breezes ferry me into soft beds and soft bodies.
in Mexico, a woman holds my palm
eres inquieta, she says.
I turn 33 in Death Valley.
the wind strikes the sand
into wisps the shape of snakes.
Fuego
the heat of Brooklyn
evaporates up the summer concrete
holding the steps of all of us
tumbling through the city.
I have a husband, a girlfriend, and a lover.
I am a giant.
I press my heavy foot onto the street
stepping over the bridges
that touch borough to borough.
unfurled, I expand across the city,
come to its borders and spill.
Agua
on the southside of San Antonio,
the curandera spins a bath for sweetness.
the petals fall onto the shower floor.
I toe the constellations at my feet.
bathed in honey,
I loosen the laces, untie myself
from my life, my marriage,
my pebble of earth.
I slip into dark waters.
Tierra
a small compass emerges in my belly.
I follow the arc of sun.
its origin touches the bedroom windows,
bowing in the living room.
I press blooms in to the clay Midwest earth,
their maroon faces stretch over the lawn
vining toward sun.
2022
First Place
Raining Red
By Mridvi Khetan
Raining Red
by Mridvi Khetan
I grew up believing that the rain is red.
Red like the scars mapped across my body,
gifted by a man who colour red embodied
Hot stew for all meals resembled the red sandstone,
which brother went to mine from blood-marked zones
Every day we took a bath in red water,
sourced from a brick well
Everywhere we were blocked by red tape,
sourced from bureaucratic cells
You see, red is omnipresent
It’s the colour of resistance but also the colour of our blood
Does this mean we’re born to resist?
I resisted red
but how can you, if all you see are corpses - dead.
A memory surfaces in my head,
how my sister was shamed monthly for her red
I can smell it too, you know
The red, a scent of my morning breath
Remnants of the wars fought by words I can only dare to speak in stealth
If red is the paint I’ve been coloured in, body and bone
It’s only logical to see my surroundings in the same tone
So when it rained the other day
I said,
“Ma, see it’s raining red today!”
Second Place
In The Tide
By Emily BALCHUNAS
In The Tide
by Emily Balchunas
He dragged himself out of bed
as the sun began to rise.
The seagulls were his alarm,
he rubbed the dreams from his eyes.
This lighthouse has seen some storms,
she sways in the night.
The wind whistles through her creaks,
but never seems to get inside.
Coffee soaked the air,
the windows let in the sunshine.
The ocean brings a breeze that shifts the house
from time to time.
The lighthouse was clean and knew his routine,
this presence of a man.
Her eggshell walls shined a bit brighter,
her lamp had a certain glisten.
She even seemed to stand a bit taller
as he occupied her land,
and with every rope he knotted
the wind would lift his hand.
The keeper of this structure was patient,
and he cared.
In the morning he’d sing to her
and at night he’d climb her stairs.
Clicking on her burning light
like brushing back her hair.
With a hot cup of tea
she thought they both would share.
Fall came and went,
every winter, time would freeze.
Every night he’d shine her light
for any ships lost at sea.
As the days would pass them by,
their nights together began to cease.
No matter how tall she stood,
she couldn’t bring him peace.
One day, the morning breeze came in
And the sun began to rise.
There were no coffee smells,
or sleepy groggy eyes.
Gone without a trace,
like he was taken in the night.
The lighthouse stood empty and still,
with his memory held inside.
Dare I to say to this very day
as the sun is sure to rise,
her eggshell halls and walls will wait
to dance with him again in the tide.
Third Place
Do You Remember?
By Robert Watt
Do You Remember?
by Robert Watt
Do you remember the Christmas ball?
Your hair worn up above its wispy strands
And swinging jewels that kissed the neck
Cool and scented with the musk of foreign lands
You rose from a dress the colour of your lips
Plunged a neckline that drew the hungry eye
Onto the eggshell curves and the teasing split
long though never quite revealed the thigh
Do you remember Trafalgar square?
Rushing to the front, running with the madding crowd,
High on passions that quickly gave to laughs or tears,
A rebel stance and voice exuberant and loud
You were strong and lithe, danced into the night,
Filled with beans for a life come recently mature.
We lit candles at both ends and did it all,
Having time and energy to spare for more.
Do you remember Fridays after work
and weekend afternoons lost in sin?
We’d toss our clothes, fall carefree in a fumbling yearn,
Hands buried in hair and greedy for a touch of skin.
We did it all together, hardly left a day apart,
With nothing but ourselves for warmth but happily,
Scraping pennies for bills and budget meals,
Slowly making house then family.
Do you remember how we got so old?
Our faces fell and hair tuned thin and grey.
Focus shifted nearer, the youthful fires cooled,
While the world unnoticed moved away.
We slowed, quietened by relentless years,
Congealed into the people we portrayed;
Staid companions, content with holding hands
Creaking and groaning into life’s denoting fade.