Every year we run our Durham Sixth Form Centre Writing Competition, this year the theme was Resilience.  We wanted to pick a theme that will allow students across the centre to participate, the piece could be a story, poem or an academic piece in the field of a student’s choice. The purpose of the competition is to provide a chance for students to be creative and produce something of their choosing as well as to promote literacy. This year we had over 30 entries and the quality was extremely high, making the job of our staff judges very difficult. The winner this year was Freya Anderson (Year 12) and the runners up were Finlay Rose (Year 12) and Katelyn Freeborn (Year 13) all receiving cash prizes, kindly donated by Potts Print (UK), for their winning entries. Congratulations to all involved.

Below is an extract from the winning piece…

Resilience, by Freya Anderson 

Crash!

And it strikes the floor.

Shards of burnt umber kaleidoscope away, skittering like restless mice across the floor to secret themselves in little hidey holes – under the radiator, on top of the staircase runner, and you even find one in your shoe, tucked just under the flapping tongue. Water bleeds out across the floor to wet the toes of your socks, and lavender lies limp, discarded and sad.

You think how mad your mother will be; to see her vase destroyed like this, to see the desecrated burial of her flowers, to see the watery sheen clogged between floorboards.

Even worse, you think how disappointed she’ll be. It makes your insides curdle like sour milk left out in the belligerent summer sun, clenched into ever-tightening knots, to think of the face she’ll pull, the same face she pulls whenever you make a mistake and come to her, wide eyed and shaky, and she has to kneel beside you to give comfort before she can admonish, all the while cleaning up the messes you make.

On your hands and knees, then, you sweep the lavender into a sad looking bouquet and bind it with a hair tie from around your wrist. You snap a stem and try to soothe it away, as if your fingers can fix the green fibres back together, and rest them on the side board. A tea towel in hand, you wipe the water clean until the floor is gleaming and still damp to the touch, but the towel is a sodden mess in your hands and releases more water than it absorbs. This, too, you discard, wringing it out in the kitchen sink and tossing it in the washing basket.