2024 runner up

REFLECTIONS

——-The bathroom tiles are cold on these winter mornings.
——-The hazy sunlight filters through the sycamore branches outside the window, creating
dancing shadows on the wall behind me.
——-A glimmer of light in the reflection of the mirror, and for a second it’s you.
——-But then a cloud comes and turns the party away.
——-The water’s cold feels more abrasive now that you’re gone.
——-It’s getting harder to pretend everything is okay, but my little routine helps.
——-I wonder if my toothbrush gets lonely now.
——-It snowed last night. The wind was howling – yearning – maybe it’s also looking for
someone it’s lost.
——-When the flakes stop tumbling down, the sun breaks through and casts a
brilliant – almost blinding – light.
——-And now everything is still, all sound is muffled.
——-I wander through my day in a haze, the only evidence of my presence new tracks in
the snow.
——-Despite the cold and the silence, the snow is a welcoming blanket over the world,
saying ‘shh, you may rest now child, you may rest.’
——-The snow always makes me feel like a little kid again; as if every painful thing has
washed away and I am new.
——-A rebirth like in the fables; an angel descending from the heavens and planting a kiss
on my forehead, washing away my impurities.
——-But I wake and realise those battered and broken halves are what make me whole.
——-I return home weary but filled with a childish sense of hope. The bathroom tiles are
still cold, but the extra space is nice.
——-And I can finally take a breath.

Freya Furjan
Year 12
Wellington Girls’ College

BALANCING WITH A TAIAHA

When I was little,
I’d watch from the creak of the door,
how she covered her lineage in a suit that was too tight for her to work in
but tight enough that it was suit able
as she’d mask her ethnicity in the makeup she gets
from the warehouse
though tears ruin the hard work.

With closed eyes she’d flicker back
to Nana’s hands on soft skinned face.
To the day where
fleshy palms parted from fleshy cheeks,
and faced toward gate 5.

When the world belonged to her.

And when the nurse took me out of the womb
and placed me on a tightrope,
she gave me a taiaha to make the balancing act easier.

A weapon like that can slay a Taniwha,
——–but can’t
—————-stab that smug look of yours
————————when you send me to the teacher who has
——————————–tech issues.

—————-Defend my humility as your
————————tongue lashed when my girl
——————————–didn’t look like me.

—————-Protect my honour when we passed
————————that dairy and called it
——————————–my origin.

——–Do you remember?

Been years since that fall,
when wild winds of change
lightly tipped me over
the edge of the rope.

I still have that Taiaha.
It sits in the corner of my room,
attracting dust like a lamp to the moth.

A weapon like that can slay a Taniwha
but can’t fend off the prejudices of this land.
So instead of fighting the wave after wave,
I’m reduced to just floating in the deep end.

The kiwi flag takes residence
where the flag of India used to be.
Dan Carter sits alongside
Jesus and Mother Mary.

Photos of my ancestors covered with cloth,
because we know they’ll shed the same look of disappointment
that we can speak more Māori
than their own mother tongue.

And when we returned to our motherland
I rushed to Nana with the greatest hug
like
——————————–I belonged in her arms.

But she placed her warm fleshy hands
on cheek to cheek,
and with her eyes she
peered
beyond
the dirt skin.

——–“Who are you?”

Raphael Ferdinands
Year 13
St John’s College, Hillcrest, Hamilton

RARELY SOFT OR CONSOLATORY:

If we are born again
as ‘ice rain’
then no doubt you are the ice
and I am the rain inside –
protected by matter the same as my own
only frozen,
hardened.

If golf ball sized hail is falling in Southland,
then you are a field of bucking sheep
and I am a young boy in the cab of a ute
looking on,
wanting to use my small form to block out
the onslaught from the sky.

And my father,
that boy’s father,
one hand on the wheel
is our circumstance –
jaw all set
and hard like wet canvas
caught in a gale,
side-eying me with contempt, as all my muscles tense
on instinct, with that wish,
to run from him to the sheep – that is to run from him to you.

He is half mocking, half actual hating
of my wretched roadkill-rabbit softness
which he thought had bred out
of his son – out of me.

When I look to you – as ice rain,
as an entire field of sheep bludgeoned by hail,
as the so called ‘choiceless hope in grief’,
I no longer see something holy –
I don’t try to define you
as wholly good or wholly bad anymore.

When I look to you, under your permafrost,
I seem to see the terror that I feel
in the face of all that I know to be beautiful
and, in my teenage
naivety,
I feel I have seen the world
just because I have known you.

Charles Ross
Year 13
Logan Park High School, Dunedin

BLIND FAITH

That warm Sunday morning light
shines through the church windows,
staining the floor, and the pews,
———and your hands
with something that was once God’s,
but is now
———too human
—–to be holy.

It tesseracts like
———a rainbow
across your open palms,
some new form of reverence.

They are reading up at the podium
a passage called Matthew 5:8

—–“blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God”.

It is at this age: 6 years old –
—————–still a young child.
You have just learnt how to tie your own laces
your favourite colour is still pink
your teachers are still calling you gifted; it is at this age that
something shifts
—–out of place.

A spare rib
—–(like Adam’s),
moved while you were sleeping.
Nothing so important that anyone will notice –
at least for a few years…

But when your mother gestures for you to
close your eyes like everybody else and pray,
you close your eyes
and search for God
—————–and you do not see him.

And when you are walking home,
skipping like you usually do,
and you hear the cicadas
buzzing in your ears
like faded violins,

—–you do not hear him either.

Toby Holden
Year 12
Wellington Girls’ College

11.47AM ON THURSDAY

It’s a used-white-shoe Thursday afternoon
Naked trees reach out like upside down
roots in all directions
Houses line the streets, a patchwork of tarmac
and gravel
Too-sharp triangles, too-perfect squares, too-bright white

Hush
The children are learning
Round-backed groups huddle over the latest laptop
Pens move as fast as thoughts in their brain
Fidget fidget
fidget
The room never quite still

Look
The quad usually bursting at the seams is empty
waiting
forty-three minutes to go
Dirty-black concrete, like a toddler with a pencil, is all that’s
left behind
Three birds hop their way from one empty packet of chips
to the next, scavenging any hidden crumbs

Look
The field once speckled with rugby boots
a carpet of green-yellow-green just vacuumed
Rugby posts stand with their heads held high, battling the trauma of
abandonment
A size ten navy hoodie lies
aimlessly, waiting

Look
You can see the fans on age-stained roofs whirr
moving so fast they appear still
Eight sit in a pattern
of disarray, spin
spin spin

Look
You can see the cars meander by
Not rush hour nor empty
A constant stream of midday traffic approaching their next appointment
An elderly couple in matching grey overcoats
stand and watch the algae-infested stream

Only you can see
the Southern Cross at the top of the flagpole, carried mindlessly
by murmurs of wind

Only you can see
the splintered ——- benches
bearing the brunt of the hole-in-the-atmosphere
sun

Only you can see
the intricately glazed windows, hiding on a wall
no one ever looks at

As your gaze returns to this classroom on the 4^th floor, only you can see
the scornful eye of the teacher demanding
no begging
your focus

Meg Simpson
Year 13
St Andrew’s College

FICKLE ARGUMENTS

*Inspired by Ilya Kaminsky “In a Time of Peace”

Daughter for seventeen or so years
I watched myself argue as if through a lens. I watched them

spit out words
ruthless, so they cut into my skin. When I tried to defend myself, my words sounded
worse. Hit him sourly.

It is a fickle argument.

We leave it without apologising.
Go to school,
on walks, to bed,
pick some purple petunias, and pink
larkspur.

Ours is a house in which the words of a girl spurred to argue spit into silence
after far too long.

I see it in his screwed face
the nakedness
of a guardian.

I watch myself. Watch
others watch him.

The words of a girl break into silence exactly like the words of a girl.

It is a fickle argument.

It slides past skin, our eyes
take a tinge, the way a mouth puckers eating something sour.

We must
continue cordially, trying hard not to offend,
brush it under the carpet
dusty, moth-bitten and all, head bowed; it is okay, crumbly and torn.

This is a fickle argument.

I cannot hear apologies,
cannot stop avoidance.

How lovely is the image
of us smiling on the screen.
How lovely is the image (forgive me) how lovely.

Charlotte McKenzie
Year 13
St Cuthbert’s College, Auckland

COLOUR FADES

if you move out
can you paint the cracks in the wall
… before you leave?

the paint’s already
—————-peeling
i’m wrapped up in feelings
in the comforter on your side ——of the arctic
we’ve lost our logic

colour fades
we still speak the same way

i don’t know
where i’m going
but i’ve followed you for
————-miles
down
——these supermarket
——————–aisles

i’ll never find what i need
i’m sorry

colour fades
i think we should change

your mail is piling up on the sofa
i thought you were listening
when i told you to
redirect your letters

eventually you’ll accept it

You
don’t
live
here
anymore.

colour fades
i guess people
————–change

Greer Castle
Year 12
Wellington Girls’ College

YOUR STREET

I can track the records
three-something-pm, some weekday
predictions of rain; when I disembarked
my heels sank into half-dried earth
—almost crawled out of my stockings
and into the soil if it weren’t for your hand.
—–What’s this, then?
Some weight pressing all the air out my lungs
but you got my weight, all is fair in whatever.
A potent swig of the sun, oh, I missed it.
Would I still drink it? No, but the longing,
it still does something dizzying to me.
—–I haven’t been here in ages.
Myself, the lion in a sheep’s den.—–Incoherent.
Not in my right mind, I justified, I justify
every half-formed chorus I refuse to pen.
Those red glasses sitting on my bookshelf
took their toll on my nose, tanned around it,
gave me headaches, I think I felt one coming on
—–Come here.
I would be a bad corpse. I cannot lie still—
one time the tremors spread to my hands, splayed
on a video camera. The stage might as well have shook.
The story has nothing to do with you, by the way.
Perhaps you’d rather hear something else?
I blanch at your street sign. Is that better?

Ysabelle Casimiro
Year 12
Baradene College of the Sacred Heart, Auckland