She Came Blustering Up to You in a Carpark Three Years Ago and Now You Can’t Get These Thoughts of Dying Out of Your Head by Weddy Alvin (16, Ireland)

She takes a look at your science notes, the messy ones that show how your mind is going a mile a minute and she gasps. It goes deep into her chest and you want to ask if she’s okay, but already she’s got your wrists in her hands. 

“Tell me you dream of the stars,” she says, eyes alight with all those things she just can’t reach because her mind has never wrapped around numbers and calculations the way yours has, and it’s a plea. She needs this in the same way that the moon needs the sky and the same way that you need to hear her laugh.

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“They’ve crossed my mind once or twice,” you whisper back because your teacher has an eye on the both of you, turned in to each other like sunflowers towards the sun.

She sighs and it makes your heart constrict. “Well that’s just not enough, is it?” she is saying, and the way she picks her pen back up has you wondering how you haven’t lost her yet. “I lay awake for them, most nights.”

“I’m sorry,” you reply, because everything’s swimming before your eyes. She’s so brightly lit with colour and it’s always been this way, it’s always been you half in love with the way her mouth moves and her half in love with the way the clouds move.

“That’s alright.” She pats your hand lightly and the world falls away for it. “Just think of them every now and then, won’t you? For me.”

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