Winner: Antonia Johnson, ‘Once’
Antonia Johnson’s poem ‘Once’ is the recipient of a 2020 Newcastle Poetry Competition Young People’s Prize.
Once
Once I carried a girl,
sitting sadly on my shoulders,
a trapped lamb crying for the sheep she’d lost.
Every night our bodies touched;
we flickered like candles on the lake.
Once I carried a girl,
lying softly in my arms,
starved by pestilence and sickness of the mind.
Every morning I held her hand,
making sure the travellers saw our flight.
Once I carried a girl,
who held tightly to my back;
I was stricken with grief with the load I had to bear.
Every mealtime we talked,
spilling every secret.
Now I’m carried by a girl
who lifts me up to heaven,
the shoulders that I always craved
but never knew I had.
She pulls me through.
Antonia Johnson, 16