Pippi Jean — First prize (equal), Year 13 11.11 pm

11.11 pm

The hometown at nighttime smells like resin and water and the flicking off of light switches, of crickets and motorway noise, of cold that slips about your neck like a wet towel. Winged things scatter in the grass; houses leak onto the street: jigsaw pieces of porches and timber weatherboards painted white. Lamplight, goodnight stories, a clatter of voices like the scraping of a plate. The trees stand solitary. Clouds wring the odd star out of the dark. We’re walking on nothing. We’re the road, unlined.

— Pippi Jean, Takapuna Grammar School