Letter on the Ribs Contest
Just short of ten days ago, my elder sister received her A level results. One short email would give her the list of her final grades and, if they were not the achingly high grades her university admission depended on, then—well, to be completely honest, we didn’t know. Backup plans had only been discussed behind closed doors, our tongues dripping with blasphemy at the thought of any outcome but the best one. We would keep our worries private and any exploration of them brief, hoping to every atom in the ever-expanding universe that the world would pave way for such determined thoughts, that the very force of our collective imagination of a reserved apartment on a seaside town and my sister in a white dental coat, surrounded by British accents, would successfully push over with bloodied fists any examiner who dared stand in the way of that dream.
Well, the day came, and I, awake at 9 am for the first time all summer, blinked at a MacBook screen covered in fingerprints and read the three letters on the page. I remember thinking—what were the letters again? Surely that could also be an A, it is taking up the same amount of space on the page. It is also made of sticks—why is it not an A? At moments like this you forget the alphabet. It is fairly common (in my limited study of one singular seventeen-year-old teenage girl, at least). When my brain finally clicked into recognition of a language it had been reading for thirteen years, I felt the dull ache that started in my furiously shaking heart and seeped out slowly into the room, like spilt oil on a countertop. It stopped at my mother’s eyes, the olive oil separating from the balsamic vinegar black/brown/black/brown and out fell one, single tear. Yet it was not an acidic tear, one rippled with anger; nor a salted one, rife with disappointment. It was clear and neutral, devoid of any energy or emotion. Had a giant bent down and poked his curly head through the window of my parents’ bedroom and given the tear a lick, he would have, with a refreshed nod, confirmed the tear was, in fact, just water. It was a tear of utter exhaustion.
Soon my family flurried into action to find an alternative path to the one we had for so many tumbling days thought was right. My dad swallowed his pills of First Born syndrome, washed them down with a chirpy voice, and called any and every university to find the way for my beautiful, talented older sister, who had been immovable from her bed, staring at a page of letters that were supposed to represent her entire school career—no, her entire life. I would stand at the door, and imagine with vicious pleasure burning that page on a barbecue.
Reading through the entries for our most recent contest, Ribs, I found myself in a similar sense of blazing pleasure—the threads of sheer passion, distress, infatuation, heartache and disenchantment which our writers wove together with shocking splendour made me feel that no longer was I watching the barbecue, I was in it. Tears ravaged these pages as well, but they were so electrified with intensity; from the visceral, gory Biblical lines of Lucy Pekovich’s “an over-exaggerated metaphor about the pain of healing” to the inner turbulence of the mind explored in Sage Walton’s “the storm,” I found that whilst reading each entry, true to the intention of the contest, I tore off a small, protective part of myself, and replaced it with eloquent, articulate words and stories of teens who had been through the varying disappointments of life, just as my sister recently had, and assured me that no one in this life is alone in struggle. We all fight, and fall, and yet one day emerge on the other side of life’s worst moments knowing we would not be the rushing, thunderous, beautifully fragile flesh and blood we are now had we not experienced those times. And so I can now comfortably sit in my new, tattered ribcage of similes and metaphors from poets and penmen much stronger than I and think perhaps my sister will find as much passion in dentistry as Lamia did in writing the exquisite, decaying beauty that is “Dental formula: I:C:P:M = 2:1:2:3” and that one day she will reflect on this period of essential growth as elegantly as Magdalena Kamphausen did in the wonderful “the elephant on my ribcage.” I hope she will not trace the ribs under her woolen jumper and find distrust and anxiety as Levi Welch, the brave author of “Skeleton Boy,” did, and instead assure him of the beauty in his own ribs and to have faith also in the ribs of the people we allow to grow around us, however broken they might find their own selves to be. It is a difficult time, being a teenager, and it is hard to trust others but it is most hard to trust ourselves. And to all the lucky, lucky readers who will, in the upcoming pages, experience the fire of those who have faltered in their own senses and crawled out of the smoke brighter, sharper, I tell you that this life will gift you with failures, with setbacks, but they do not make us, rather, what we make of them makes us. So embrace the barbecue and, even though summer is now over, put your feet up—because whatever happens, you will always be ok.
Yours gratefully,
Maheen Shahbazi
Poetry Editor
Courtney Felle Editor-In-Chief
Marriah Talbott-Malone Prose Editor
Just short of ten days ago, my elder sister received her A level results. One short email would give her the list of her final grades and, if they were not the achingly high grades her university admission depended on, then—well, to be completely honest, we didn’t know. Backup plans had only been discussed behind closed doors, our tongues dripping with blasphemy at the thought of any outcome but the best one. We would keep our worries private and any exploration of them brief, hoping to every atom in the ever-expanding universe that the world would pave way for such determined thoughts, that the very force of our collective imagination of a reserved apartment on a seaside town and my sister in a white dental coat, surrounded by British accents, would successfully push over with bloodied fists any examiner who dared stand in the way of that dream.
Well, the day came, and I, awake at 9 am for the first time all summer, blinked at a MacBook screen covered in fingerprints and read the three letters on the page. I remember thinking—what were the letters again? Surely that could also be an A, it is taking up the same amount of space on the page. It is also made of sticks—why is it not an A? At moments like this you forget the alphabet. It is fairly common (in my limited study of one singular seventeen-year-old teenage girl, at least). When my brain finally clicked into recognition of a language it had been reading for thirteen years, I felt the dull ache that started in my furiously shaking heart and seeped out slowly into the room, like spilt oil on a countertop. It stopped at my mother’s eyes, the olive oil separating from the balsamic vinegar black/brown/black/brown and out fell one, single tear. Yet it was not an acidic tear, one rippled with anger; nor a salted one, rife with disappointment. It was clear and neutral, devoid of any energy or emotion. Had a giant bent down and poked his curly head through the window of my parents’ bedroom and given the tear a lick, he would have, with a refreshed nod, confirmed the tear was, in fact, just water. It was a tear of utter exhaustion.
Soon my family flurried into action to find an alternative path to the one we had for so many tumbling days thought was right. My dad swallowed his pills of First Born syndrome, washed them down with a chirpy voice, and called any and every university to find the way for my beautiful, talented older sister, who had been immovable from her bed, staring at a page of letters that were supposed to represent her entire school career—no, her entire life. I would stand at the door, and imagine with vicious pleasure burning that page on a barbecue.
Reading through the entries for our most recent contest, Ribs, I found myself in a similar sense of blazing pleasure—the threads of sheer passion, distress, infatuation, heartache and disenchantment which our writers wove together with shocking splendour made me feel that no longer was I watching the barbecue, I was in it. Tears ravaged these pages as well, but they were so electrified with intensity; from the visceral, gory Biblical lines of Lucy Pekovich’s “an over-exaggerated metaphor about the pain of healing” to the inner turbulence of the mind explored in Sage Walton’s “the storm,” I found that whilst reading each entry, true to the intention of the contest, I tore off a small, protective part of myself, and replaced it with eloquent, articulate words and stories of teens who had been through the varying disappointments of life, just as my sister recently had, and assured me that no one in this life is alone in struggle. We all fight, and fall, and yet one day emerge on the other side of life’s worst moments knowing we would not be the rushing, thunderous, beautifully fragile flesh and blood we are now had we not experienced those times. And so I can now comfortably sit in my new, tattered ribcage of similes and metaphors from poets and penmen much stronger than I and think perhaps my sister will find as much passion in dentistry as Lamia did in writing the exquisite, decaying beauty that is “Dental formula: I:C:P:M = 2:1:2:3” and that one day she will reflect on this period of essential growth as elegantly as Magdalena Kamphausen did in the wonderful “the elephant on my ribcage.” I hope she will not trace the ribs under her woolen jumper and find distrust and anxiety as Levi Welch, the brave author of “Skeleton Boy,” did, and instead assure him of the beauty in his own ribs and to have faith also in the ribs of the people we allow to grow around us, however broken they might find their own selves to be. It is a difficult time, being a teenager, and it is hard to trust others but it is most hard to trust ourselves. And to all the lucky, lucky readers who will, in the upcoming pages, experience the fire of those who have faltered in their own senses and crawled out of the smoke brighter, sharper, I tell you that this life will gift you with failures, with setbacks, but they do not make us, rather, what we make of them makes us. So embrace the barbecue and, even though summer is now over, put your feet up—because whatever happens, you will always be ok.
Yours gratefully,
Maheen Shahbazi
Poetry Editor
Courtney Felle Editor-In-Chief
Marriah Talbott-Malone Prose Editor
