Category Two winners
Congratulations to our Category Two winner, Anna Babington. Anna’s poem is haunting, lyrical and full of images that feel both unusual and deeply familiar, as though once you’ve read them, you think ‘Ah, of course! That’s exactly what that is like.’
Runner up:
Jenna Howell (StAC)
We also loved:
Tessa Marshall (Avonside)
Read Anna’s poem below, and the others will be published in our first issue of WE magazine.
Digital collage by Tayla Fleming (StAC)
Beginnings by Anna Babington (SMC)
sitting on the bus
ripped patterns, hunchback seats,
they sagged into the bus and we sagged into them
with the graceful callousness that adolescence
had draped our legs with
you pointed at your veins
said ‘this is where the stardust is kept’
we have graveyards of celestial bodies
hidden in our veins
the night sky’s afterlife is contained
within our bodies,
sitting on the bus
we were the heirlooms of the universe
did i ever tell you that i’m scared?
scared of of all the little things that i lose
so carelessly
like you
i lost you like another pair of socks
gone now.. i am scared of being gone as well
i am now gone to you
you sound like my greatest fears
like the regrets of war heroes
who sit by rivers
scrubbing at their hands
because the crimson
won’t come off
blood is a promise
blood is the religion that the blade prays to
can you begin again?
i know beginnings are hard, like starched clothing
they don’t fit at first, they are suffocating
but you can squeeze into them.
it feels like falling at first
inhale that vertigo,
repeat my name and spit it out into the throbbing air,
rid yourself of who we were
unshackle your tongue of the shape of my name
so please tell me tell me can you begin again?
i’m not sure i can
i didn’t do a proper apology
i hope you saw the apology in my eyes
but i think i forgot to put it there
instead it ferments in my head
an alcoholic manifestation of my tears
you can drink it if you ever want to forget
and begin, begin again
do you see me everywhere?
i see you
you’re in the bright grinning fruit at the supermarket
you dance in between the cracks in the concrete
my stupid laughter at internet memes
is lonely without your voice there too
it hunches over
falls like a dying action figure
trips over its own feet
cos there ain’t no one else there to trip over
i didn’t see you til i don’t see you anymore
there’s a certain lulling homesickness in my heart
it drowns me whenever
my eyes fall onto my veins
because i remember the stardust
and i remember the stars that you lathered my world with
and all i can see is the too dark night sky