Commended: Charlie Jolley, Emily Taylor

Charlie Jolley

Commended - 2025 Tower Poetry Prize, 'Roots'

Emily Taylor

I can still hear her talking
about sex over the upturned flashlight

of her Bunsen burner, or battering the top
off some hard-boiled gossip to get to the yolk

of someone else's business. She was famous
at our school for snogging a boy old enough

to drive a car. While we were flower-picking
little girls, Emily was a woman: tall and skinny

as a latte, legs waxed, bra appliqued
with French lace. I would have done anything

for her primer’d beauty. Where does all that love
go? The type that courses through the gutters

of youth, clings to every brief and fragile
miracle. I saw her in the supermarket last week:

coal-bagged eyes, wrinkled face. She was unloading
her shopping, just like everybody else.