Second Place // Excerpt
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“In the beginning there was here and there and the space in between.”

“According to Aristotle, a stone falls because it's trying to return home to the center of the earth. Falling, therefore, is its natural motion. Unnatural motion is a stone thrown upwards, away from home. However, such unnatural motions are short-lived and the ‘natural desire’ of the stone to return to the Earth takes over.”

“When they say the wind has boxed the compass, the wind has gone around the full 360°. It has come from every possible angle in such a brief period of time, that even constantly retrimming the sails, it is impossible to just continue on.”

“It is always Sunday. Here. In my country. The country between the mirrors. There is no map here for its borders are always shifting. You can only enter it sideways and by looking the other way. You have to run headlong into the sea or jump from a building and not hit the ground. You must run for miles until the last familiar tree is long past. It is always ten minutes beyond where you thought you were lost. [My fear is simple, heart-faced above a flare of etchings.] There are many citizens here, but we don't all know each other's names and only run across each other by chance. Except in the reflections where thousands of us all live together for a moment. Except the moment lasts a lifetime and children are born and die. [My soul is lost between myth and belief] We take what has been left behind and build houses and statues. Memorials to the Migrant King and The Woman Who Offered Soup and The People Who Died in the Crossing. We have been left behind by the sea of time pulling the nations away from us. We couldn't run fast enough to keep up.”