Congratulations to our First Prize winner of the Hope and Healing Poetry Prize! Read the winning poem below:
Sunflower House Man
I met the sunflower house man mid-summer,
when all that was potted was cigarette butts
and every unwanted weed that cracked up in his path.
A porch with no lightbulb.
A kitchen with no laughter.
Only shadows and a sink full of apology. He was one of my most significantly insignificant relationships.
A footnote that rewrote the whole book.
One of those men who enters quietly,
but rearranges the furniture of your self-worth without asking.
And still-
I hesitate to give that puny punk any credit.
But I suppose... give it where it's due.
One star.
Out of the million ones I'm made up of.
He was all autumn and bones.
That brittle kind of beautiful.
The kind that crunches under your feet
when you weren't trying to hurt anything.
I let him in.
Let him grow in the soft places I hadn't tended yet.
And he did what weeds do.
Choked the light.
Fed on what was fragile.
I felt the placenta detach like Velcro from my stomach.
Followed by a navel-orange-sized what- could-have-been
garburating from my body like an apology too late.
There was no ceremony.
No prayer.
No closing of the eyes or hand to hold. Just linoleum.
And fluorescent lights humming like they
didn't witness it all.
I left part of myself there not just the cells,
but the version of me who still believed
that love and destruction weren't twins.
But he made sure to teach me otherwise.
One night,
his hands came down on me like a trapdoor
like he had waited for the exact moment
when I was too tired to run.
Wrapped his fingers around my neck
like he was trying to silence God.
Held me there until the edges of the world curled black.
Two ribs cracked like secrets.
Bruises painting a confession down my side.
I didn't scream.
Didn't fight.
I just floated somewhere above the pain
where my body could pretend it wasn't mine.
When I came to,
I crawled out the front door,
clutching a cactus for dear life.
Let it bleed me,
because at least it didn't lie when it hurt me.
The next morning he made toast.
Said I was too sensitive.
Said I bruise easy.
He never said sorry.
But the bruises did.
The walls did.
The silence did.
And the mirror,
every time I looked into it
she just turned her face away.
But I don't.
Not anymore.
Now I look into that mirror
and I hold her gaze.
I run my fingers over the ribs that healed crooked,
over the scars that stayed
like signatures.
And I whisper
Not for him,
but for her.
You got out.
You came back to yourself.
You were never too sensitive.
You were sacred the whole fuckin time.
And the cactus?
It still grows outside my door.
No longer something to cling to-
but something that reminds me:
I survived the kind of love that tried to kill me.
And I am still here.
Thorns and all.
Birdy is a poet and survivor whose work explores girlhood, fractured families, abusive love, and the long work of recovery. Her debut collection, Molded by Men, blends confessional lyric with spoken-word intensity, turning scars into signatures. When not writing, she finds healing in nature, foraging mushrooms and herbs, where the language of survival first rooted itself.
