Thank you. I am happy to win, but not because of the win itself. I'm struggling right now, more so than ever, to put my thoughts and feelings into words and those words into poems. But the fact is that it's almost been 2 months since he died, and it's not getting any easier to survive myself. I want to write the perfect poem to capture this grief, to forever immortalize the greatest friend one could ever have. I want to craft him a tombstone - a memorial - that will be as endless as his love. It feels like I'm not getting closer to reaching the perfection needed for me to properly convey his beauty, though. Not yet.

He meant more to me than the world, and for countless nights since he died I have cursed fate for not taking me in his stead. If there is a God, I will never forgive him for taking the most beautiful person I have ever met, away from this earth. The world became a much darker place without his light here to illuminate the darkness that eats away at the souls of everyone his kind embrace ever healed.