2014 ELIZABETH GRAEME
AWARD IN POETRY

WINNER

Erin Farrell
CB East High School

An excerpt from “Child of the Sky”

That's when I found out I was really alone
a single mind in a vast black universe full of planets and galaxies
and suns and moons and billions of people yet it was just me
solely me, a singular and hopeless soul, blind, bumping around
on a big rock in a universe that didn't even realize I was there
and I heard the hot flush of blood in my ears
while I watched the cold clouds flutter from my mouth to lick the air
I thought maybe you were watching them, too
but I felt so empty in that spooned out hole in my chest
where you feel everything
like galaxies were being ripped in me, yawning holes of black nothing
and I stared up at the sky for what seemed like years
looking for some answer, some deep soul truth
dark as the bowl of hard sky poked through by cold holes
to star-white heaven that you just want to run your hands over
thinking about life and death but mostly you and your ghost bones
and what Mrs. Johnson told me yesterday
that we came from a supernova when the universe burst
into being from a beginning bright blankness
so we're kinda born from stars when you think about it
lined with the stuff of stars, cosmic and blue along your veins
so if we're destined to be our parents
I'd like to trace my lineage to the sky