SWS: Somewhere Between Here and There Challenge Winners

Some poems show up in the middle of things. You’re halfway through a step, or catching your breath before the next word, and suddenly it all feels clear. That’s exactly where this challenge took us.

Somewhere Between Here and There invited writers to capture the in-between: mid-thought, mid-walk, mid-sentence. What we got were restless minds caught in loops, images that flickered and fled, and emotions suspended in motion. These poems chased memories, tangled with meaning, and lingered in moments that hadn’t quite settled.

🏆 Winners

Stuttering by Hannah Moore

Hannah Moore drops us right into the middle of a restless mind, where intention and doubt tug against each other in real time. Every pause, correction, and unfinished thought feels honest and familiar, capturing the messy process of trying to shape something meaningful before the words slip away.

object permanence by Sara Little

Sara Little's entry captures the frantic rhythm of a racing mind, where each line spirals deeper into everyday anxieties. The way repetition builds on itself, especially with the word 'jam,' reflects that sticky feeling of thoughts piling up and getting tangled.

Spatchcock the Brain by Mackenzie Davis

Mackenzie Davis leans into the messy, playful struggle of chasing thoughts and watching them slip away. Those images of catching ideas like clouds or bees stick with you, mixing into a kind of frantic beauty that captures that tug between forgetting and trying to make sense of it all.

Lucifer, Falling by Annie Kapur

Annie Kapur's exploration of descent drops us into the heart of free-fall, where the image of “clouds like padlocks” hints at both confinement and the faint promise of release.

Flora and Freaks by Natasha Collazo

Natasha Collazo's poem lingers in the uneasy space between mercy and darkness, tracing moments that feel uncomfortably close to home, from a child with a gun to a mother’s betrayal to a choice that could still be made.

🎖️ Runners-up

• Pyrrhic Victory by Edward Swafford
• Pacing by Willem Indigo
• when i was walking by Morgana
• The Rearview by Ellie Hoovs
• Half-Breed: Split Feather, Forked Path by Autumn S.
• Cold Feet by Katarina Tyler
• Beaconless by E. L. Stacy
• Blue Book by Homayra Adiba
• Babeh. by Jen Parkhill “JP”
• The Deep End of the Woods by Imola Tóth
• That One Forest at the Back of That One House by Oneg In The Arctic
• next episode > by Alexandria Stanwyck
• You want it Darker...Glitch... by Novel Allen
• Storytelling on Pause by Lightning Bolt ⚡
• Still the Sun by Paul Stewart

🏅 Honorable Mentions

• just like other girls by Mallory Rose
• a canvas of shadows by Harleen 🤎
• the air stirs by ⸘jason alan‽
• The in-between by Rae Janney
• Exit Wounds by Mesh Toraskar
• Step by Sonia Heidi Unruh
• Codependent Clauses by Gerard DiLeo
• The thought was there by Maggie
• Aspire To Be by Caitlyn Wenzel
• Mind the Mess by Obsidian Words

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