2024 Winners
Teen Winner:
Do You Remember
by Miranda Benoit
When I think of you
I can’t help but wonder
Do you remember my favorite color?
Do you remember that I love sports?
Do you remember the last time we hugged?
The more time we spend apart
The less I care
My inner child sobs
How has it gone this far?
When did I stop being your little girl?
When did you stop caring about me?
I remember painful nights
Where I would cry for you
Hoping and Wishing
That you would come back
And make me whole again
I can’t help but think
Maybe I’m the problem
But deep down I know
It’s not my fault
It was yours.
Adult Winner:
A Loneliness
by Lisa Gurian
Sometimes I awake with the most exquisite loneliness
An ache so encompassing
I can just lay there.
Examining each sunbeam dust mote
the minutia of a color on the edge of a bauble on a shelf with all it’s history
mingled with my past, a meditative stillness
that will snap any second.
I am consumed with yearnings
recollections
good deed, bad deed
lost
found
efforts, assaults, triumphs
fury, betrayals, survivals
Exhausted.
I hear my own heartbeat
harsh breath
sounds of the house, critters in the awakening day.
I am struck with the ides of all reasons one gets up, or does not
Overwhelmed.
Confused.
I lay there staring at something on my shelf, in my room, in my bed.
‘You are safe’ I say
‘you are safe now.’
And there is a pause where that is so.
And then;
I am saturated with memory, longing,
and exquisite loneliness