Winners 2016

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Natasha Blinder (Commended)

South Hampstead High School, London

Nine Days

I hate you for:
1. how during summer storms the rain
echoes in my hollow bones
like drummer’s hands
2. how when I run through city dark
sky wraps around me like a mourner’s shroud
and I can’t breathe for joy of it
3. lastly,

how all things now are swallows
of ocean, and dirt, and wind.
And the wholeness of it,
(that ripe-plum wholeness),
bruises me the colour of its skin.

I will not credit you with that
as long as your absence
is a nine days’ wonder, one that renders
clouds into blades
and my eyes into their whetstones.