Reconciliation

• Vicky Guan, Grade 10, North Sydney Girls High School
• Poetry
• 2021

Excellence Award in the 'Play On Words 2021' competition

By the leaping dance of lake currents
our future suspends in the air.
Silence doesn’t arise in a vacuum;
It is manufactured and embraced
We built this stillness,
Seated on a tumbledown timber dock
Overlooking mint green lily pads,
Willows bent over in mourning.
We ignore the bitter taste of grief in the air,
Thick enough to bite.
I don’t want this poem to ache.
I want to think about that dusk as tenderness
instead of something with teeth.
Together we watch clustered lily pads
Venture their separate ways,
But neither of us say a word.