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Hope Poetry Competition Winner

We are delighted to announce the winners of the first competition of 2014 and would like to congratulate the winning writers. As always, we only publish the winning entry allowing the other poems to be published elsewhere more readily.

1st Prize: £200.00 Ruth Anderson

2nd Prize: £150.00 Fred Myers

3rd Prize: £100.00 Patrick Archer

 

Splinters

by Ruth Anderson

Hope, I cling to it as I teeter above a precipice of inky blackness. My knuckles grip, tightly, to the angular cliff face of my own depression, but somewhere, hope remains.

A flicker of anticipation, I hear the word ‘maybe’ echoing around my prison of rock, but how do I hold on to hope, when I am drawn ever nearer to the void?  A solitary tear falls. It is swallowed up immediately by the shadows that entice me ever closer.

I blink, eyes aching, and now strangely dry, frozen within their sockets. Am I staring? Here,  memory is vague. I wonder why I cling so hard to an emptiness that consumes.

Time does not exist here. I am in a cavern of my own making. A dream-like state grips me. Images of all that I have tried to forget, my failings, my losses. They unfold before me, a cinematic film show of grief. Where was my happy ending?

Pain, sharp, pricks at my conscious mind. It is an unwelcome emotion. I let it wash over me in waves. Hope, there it is again. The pain brought this resurgence; I swallow hard, frozen body warming as I look, unashamedly into the light.

Yellow rays from the sun, penetrate the rocky crags. My barrier against life , no longer secure. Fragmented rock split, tumbling, cascading, disappearing into the blackness below, while sunlight consumes, splintering this darkest depression.

I realize, with upward gaze, that hope, my protector, is the strongest emotion of all.

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