1st Place
Maiya Elali – ‘On the Flip Side’
They needed a god.
It was the tumult and the spiral of restlessness,
the empty rhetoric that screamed out at them –
they needed a god,
to silence them.
There was nothing looking back
but those reflections,
and they mirrored nothing
– their greatest fear.
I didn’t need a god.
Atheist,
born from the primordial soup
of eternity.
I didn’t need the quiet,
kept company with the stars,
on the empty boulevard.
These buildings are like altars,
but more like the bars of a prison cell,
and the only way out is up.
The neon signs glitter fantastic
but lit like an ancient candelabra.
The fear I once felt is as old as time,
and it has tasted the dust of old bones
and withered kings,
who never made it.
The shining legacy of a failed vanguard
penultimate: swaying to and fro
between the alpha and omega.
Next to last, until now –
The terminus ad quem.
I am not afraid any more.
In the valley of the shadows of my steeples.
they needed a god,
and it was I.
Maiya in her own words: “I am a law graduate and freelance writer from Sydney who enjoys the beach and Frank Sinatra. I’m currently working on my first novel.”
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