Trophy
by Katherine Lam, Presbyterian Ladies’ College
Winner, Years 11 – 12, performance poetry
I broke up with you in the spring.
I know because the tulips were growing red in my garden
and I told myself,
how pretty they would look in the trophy that I was going to win
because I was going to win.
When I was five years old I was told that there are winners and there are losers.
…and I was a winner, so, I
shouldered the organisation, the endless brutalisation,
I buried my agitation in my determination to gain some kind of compensation
my complacence a destination for the lack of slack
because life is that worn down pack on your back
that you shoulder, heaving, around an endless track–
I was a winner, and winners will climb
and climb,
and climb,
and let time and people and lives fly by
until you’re running on it: that raw, real, rush and nothing much else at all,
because life is a ladder and if you try to carry someone with you
you will fall, and fall, and fall in lo–
I was a winner, and a star, and I burned–
fingertips flaming every fleeting flower alight,
I could only fight and prove I was right,
so I did.
And I slaughtered and butchered my way up the mountain of corpses I left behind
despite your heart bleeding all over my fingers,
and I fought and I fought and I fought
because life is a cesspool of struggle, a battle of beasts
where you face your foes, faceless (despite you remembering that they are human)
and wonder if that’s how they see you too.
I am a winner, and winners don’t sacrifice space and time for stolen moments–
I am a winner, and winners don’t wonder about lost nights and longing gazes and laughter–
I am a winner, and winners don’t waste time picking tulips from their garden to give to someone they might have lo–
…leaving, levering, leeching: this is what I learn and this is what I live
because life is a trade off and you only get one thing or nothing
at
all.
So,
I traded your flowers for a trophy
I traded your quiet gaze for the glare of the cameras
I traded your laughter for a crowd chanting my name, and they chant it now– raging, roaring, real– and I stand on this podium and I close my trembling fingers around the trophy and I raise it higher and higher and higher and I am the victor and I am a winner and I have won and all I can think is
I have lost
I have lost
I have lost.
Want to read more poems? Explore the other Years 11 – 12 finalists.