Congratulations to Chris Pearson, one of the winners of the July 2026 writing contest.
Homonculus
by Chris Pearson
I’m not sure when it happened,
But a tiny piece of you
Must have broken off.
A tiny, perfect replica of you,
Three dust specks high.
Same hair, same eyes,
Same fingers and toes.
She scaled my shoe,
A brown leather cragg.
Her tiny crampons,
Leaving holes,
Too minute to see.
It probably reduced,
The useable life of the shoe,
But I don’t mind.
I doubt she had time,
To scale my jeans as well.
She probably waited,
Till I bent down,
To untie my shoes,
And hopped like a flea,
Only prettier, obviously,
Onto my arm.
Image Description: A father holds the hands of his child as they step off the edge of the dock and reach for the shoreline. They are silhouetted against the ocean.
Credit: Natalia Kolotvina / Pexels
That climb, though,
Must have been hard.
Her tiny hands,
Grasping the fibres of the cloth,
Pulling herself up,
Warp by weft,
Stitch by stitch,
Tiny shoulders straining.
Then, at last
My collar, my neck.
And from there,
Somehow,
She wriggled into my head,
And nestled there,
Between my skull and brain,
Curling up and sleeping,
Exhausted from her long climb.
And that’s where I am now.
Walking around,
Doing laundry, cooking dinner,
Todaying my today.
And all the while,
There’s a perfect little copy.
Of you, right there,
In the back of my mind.
About the Author
Chris Pearson (he/him) is an adult human of middling years who came to poetry via the well-worn route of studying archaeology at Cambridge, conducting crime scene examinations for the Metropolitan Police and then a decade of stay-at-home parenting for two smaller humans he helped make himself. His work has been highly commended in the 2025 Shelley Memorial International Poetry Competition and the 2026 Caterpillar Poetry Prize.
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