[Certain]

Before my vote, I'll say that this is an amazing end to a wonderful tournament. Thanks to both finalists and everyone else who competed.

Soulstice: This is just such a wonderfully lush verse. There are layers, but none feel stretched or forced. It's comfortable. Your mechanical prowess is at its most refined here, with not a word forced. I don't often read someone stringing together three consecutive no-filler rhymes like "welcomed aboard. I trembled and warned of terrible storms." while allowing it to read so naturally. Sure, the approach wasn't anything terribly creative on the topic. You had the surface layer of a washed-up sailor, the second about love and then a third one that seems to hinge on the concept of destiny and hope that goes beyond love. That's the one I latched on to. The first stanza was my favorite, in part because "staid" is one of my favorite words. There are some tremendous turns of phrase here, too: "I felt my faith in decline" and "We never realized that youth had a human constraint" and "why rescue a memory?" To nitpick, and this is an extreme version of that, I didn't like the use of "starboard" and "stargazed" in such proximity, and "the sun drowned to death" was a little trite, and you seemed to be reaching on how many ways you could say "water" without saying "water." You've had a tremendous run in this tournament, and this was an impressive finish to it.

Darth Yoda: I love that while Soulstice honed in on "Destination," you went with "Our" as the focal point of your verse. I've read these types of verses before, describing the community that we inhabit together, but they never come with this level of eloquence and insight. The "urban artistic effect" line was so great, and your words hit so close to home for me as someone who, over the past 14 years (with gaps) has invested so much into this hobby. There were a handful of other particularly great lines: "success is painted in red, and as brothers, we're boiling blood that delineates us as persons" and "cus metaphors are loosely based on deceit. we use lies to weed away at our weakness." But between those lines, there was a little bit of wasted motion. The first and last lines weren't quite up to the rest of the verse, the first because it didn't make much sense out of context and the last because it seemed a little heavy-handed in tying the topic in. The "guns become roses" line didn't fully connect with me, either. I love how you weave in and out of concepts, and the colors and the map drawing and the other metaphors were well-established. This verse is particularly impressive in such a small, 16-line space. You were more ambitious than Soulstice by quite a bit. But in that ambition, the verse didn't quite feel as tightly wound and perfect. Soulstice hit the line-drive grand slam, while you hit the 500-foot two-run homer.

Vote: Soulstice