2026 "London" Literary Prizes International Poetry 1st Runner-Up

​$100 CAN prize

For Strength

by Sreeja Naskar

The estate-sale catalog lists it
as Geranium in Glass, an unremarkable study,
signed but barely legible, described politely
as “curious,” which is the word they use
when they don’t know how to say wrong.
Beside the stem, someone—perhaps the artist,
or whoever loved them—has written
for strength, though not in English,
which is how I knew it must’ve traveled
farther than the photograph admits.
It sold last week for 12.50.
Of course it breaks your heart,
botanicals without context,
but this is different from all
our great-aunts’ pastel florals.
It might be the bottle
beside the geranium’s leaning body— 
brown glass, no label, but something
cloudy sloshing inside, the color
of a bruise teaching itself to fade— 
that makes the whole scene look like
a still life of slow disasters.
And the light, which should soften,
instead makes the petals throb
with a too-late kind of red.
Who leaves a plant at the edge of a table
like that, half unpotted, half deciding
whether to surrender?
In the corner, someone tried
to paint a window, but the perspective
collapses into itself, and the frame
crooks inward, the way a body does
when the doctor says wait here.
Of course it breaks, the spell
of what the painter must’ve meant— 
calm, or contemplation, or some
tender discipline—but this is not
the lesson they thought they were teaching.
In the far background, a wash
of impossible blue, maybe sky,
maybe the idea of sky.
In the near distance, the bottle again,
catching the reflection of a hand
that isn’t there anymore.
And how is it still upright,
this trembling geranium
whose shadow tips toward the edge
as if it, too, is listening
for the sound of something
finally giving way?

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​Sreeja Naskar lives in a city with more sun than is reasonable. Her work has surfaced in several corners of the internet, including The Best of the Net Anthology, ONE ART, ALOCASIA, Ink Sweat & Tears, Scapegoat Review and Acumen Poetry, largely because editors occasionally mistake her existential dread for poetic nuance. When not writing, she's usually found apologizing to her half-dead succulents for her lack of a green thumb.