Chloe Heineke
Highly Commended, Senior Category (15-18 years)
Longing
This is who we are;
hungry.
We’ve always been hungry
and lost, too.
They say what we have in common with the Gods is our hunger,
gluttons for food or punishment,
we long for fulfillment,
to fill that empty aching maw
always so desperately hungry
for food
or love
or a satiation to our fleeting lusts,
a moment of bright burning passion.
Ambitious and ravenously hollow
with bright sparks in our eyes and craving wicked tongues,
we are just like the Gods come before us.
Our tongues are silver and gold,
they will slice and hurt as readily as we will consume and we shall consume.
Our hungers are the eye of existence’s storm.
This shared trait between us only brings a brief calm,
and though it may be called blasphemous
in this way we are the Gods of our domain,
for we hurt and hunt and fight and consume anything that lies in our paths,
we devour and grow and take up steel and stone against what were once our most revered Gods,
for we are hungry.
And, though they are hungry too, that kinship means little to us anymore
without faith in the promise of more food to come.
Hungry beasts do not share their spoils in times of famine.
Famine is not only a lack of bread or wine,
but a shortage of compassion
(our great classical antiquity; compassion)
an eye for an eye
(the whole world goes blind, but I was hungry)
and we wish to consume
and consume we shall till there is no more to eat but ourselves.
Isn’t it ironic?
For what left is there to consume but ourselves once we have devoured the divine?