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Winning Story: Love, Unwritten, By Anonymous
Love it unwritten.
It lingers between the lines, in the half-breaths before confessions, in the fingertips that almost, but never quite, touch. Between the eyes of lovers, in the palms of friends, in the February air. Sky. Night. It is everywhere. Inescapable. Painted in grand strokes across stories and whispered in melodies that haunt the air. They say love is the pinnacle of existence, the missing piece, the soft ending to a rough start. They say it’s a compass guiding you in the right directions. They say it’s in the fleeting moments, in the seconds between minutes, in the hours of a day.
But I’ve never been sure I believe them.
I’ve imagined what it would be like to have someone love you, and to love them back. I’ve imagined what it would feel like to be in their presence as much as possible. I’ve imagined what it would sound like to have their songs intertwine with your own. A symphony to call your own. A symphony you could call home.
But I’ve never been sure I trust that.
Love is insistent.
It pressed itself in my life like an unwanted guest, filling the silence with stories that are not mine. It is there in the glances between strangers, in the way the world sighs at grand declarations, in the expectation that I, too, should yearn for its touch. But love and I have always been at odds. On different sides of the coin. The sun and the moon. The moth and the fla me. It is chaos disguised as harmony, a force too vast to be tamed by the fragile hope of human hands.
And yet…
I cannot deny the way my heart stirs at its call. At its sounds. At its voice. Despite my defiance, my resistance, my restraint, I catch myself wondering: what would it be like to surrender? To let love write itself and plaster its words on my skin. To have its ink seep deep through my blood until it clings to my bones? I watch it slip between people, weaving its invisible threads…and I envy them. I resent them. I long for something I do not know how to name. And it’s hurting - hurting me. Perhaps love is not meant to be conquered. Or understood. Or found. Perhaps it’s meant to be complicated. Meant to be tangled. Maybe it’s in the way the sky changes at dusk, in the weight of an unread letter. I have spent my life keeping that feeling, that emotion at bay, fearing its power, fearing its strength, yet always, always looking back.
Love is grim.
It's a stranger. A stranger lurking amongst the shadows, waiting its turn to hunt its prey. Its victim. Who will be first to fall into its claws? Its jaws. Who will be the first to plead? To pray? To bleed? It’s a ghost. A ghost in the corners, shrouded in darkness and swallowed in the eerie night, piercing eyes watching. Who will be the first to notice? To run? To hide? It’s a creature. A creature in the woods, high in the trees, counting the hours. Minutes. Seconds. It waits. It hunts. It feasts. Waits for someone to fall into its trap, hunting them down when they start to realise, and left dead. Stone, cold dead. In the middle of the night. In the middle of the woods. In the middle of fear.
There are countless times where I’ve fought back. When I’ve fought off the strangers, when I’ve lit a ghost into flames, when I’ve killed the creature and left it to rot. There are countless times where I’ve won. But there are also times where I’ve lost. When the strangers reached out and grabbed hold of me, when the ghost would wrap itself around my bones, my soul, when the creature would leave me for the dead. The crows circling above my head. I see it as a nightmare - a nightmare I can’t get rid of. I’ve only ever ignored it, but now more than ever, the nightmare returns. The same sharp, stinging cold I wake up to or the red, fiery poison I feel seep into my blood. No matter how much I try to fight it and avoid it, the stranger, the ghost, the creature, they always come running back, chasing me until I surrender.
I don’t want to surrender.
I’ve built walls against love, but they are made of glass, and love…it continues to try and drill its way through. It watches me through the small cracks that I’ve never quite been able to conceal. It watches me, waiting for the moment when the glass finally shatters. And sometimes, when the world is still and the weight of solitude grows heavy, I wonder what it would be like to let it in. Would it hurt? Would it heal? Would it fill the empty spaces? Replace the splinters and seal up the wounds?
I hear stories of a writer - a writer who spent their life crafting love stories but never lived on. I think of them often, wondering if they felt the same longing I do, the same contradiction of wanting and fearing in equal measure. I wonder if they, too, wrestled with the stranger, the ghost, the creature. If they spent their nights staring at the ceiling, tracing outlines of imagined hands against their own. Imagined smiles to match their own. Imagined eyes lingering just a little while longer.
But I don’t want to surrender.
Love is exhausting.
It demands vulnerability. I don’t think I’m there yet. It demands surrender. I don’t think I’m there yet. It seeps into the cracks of our carefully structured lives and rearranges everything without permission. I don’t think I’m there yet. It does not negotiate. It does not wait. And so, perhaps, my hesitation is not truly about whether I deserve love, but whether I am ready for the weight of it. To love is to risk, and I have spent a lifetime avoiding the precipice, fearing the fall more than the loneliness that comes with standing still.
I’ve learnt to protect myself from it. I told myself that the fear was defence. A shield. Or so I thought that’s what I was doing. I thought I could hold up my walls, I thought I was carrying the shield, I thought I was protecting myself. I wasn’t. My walls were crumbling, my shield was a sword, and I was exposing myself. Broken. Lost. Alone. I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t fight the strangers. I couldn’t fight the ghosts. I couldn’t fight the creatures. I couldn’t. I couldn’t.
I didn’t want to be saved. But maybe, just maybe, that wasn’t such a bad thing. They say the boy saving the girl is traditional. An old tale. Patriarchal. Snow White, The Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty. But what happens if you are so lost? So hurt? So torn apart? What then? Maybe it’s not called saving or rescuing or an act of heroism. Maybe it’s something else. When a moment of vulnerability is shared between two people. Neither one is saving the other but rather saving each other. I used to hate the idea of being saved. I used to hate the idea of love at first sight. First glance. First touch.
I used to hate it. Love. I don’t think I hate it anymore.
Love is unwritten.
It stands beside me at the edge of the cliff. It does not push, does not pull, but simply waits. It speaks in quiet patience, in laughter that softens fear, in a presence that feels like the first breath of spring after an endless winter. It was never a stranger, or a ghost, or a creature. It was unfamiliar. Unseeable. Untamable. I think that’s what scared me the most. But I’m done running. I’m done hiding myself away from it. I’m done fighting. I’m done yielding the sword that wounds myself more. I’m done hurting.
Second Place: This Much is True, by Anonymous
Theirs was a tale as old as time itself. Two smalltown childhood sweethearts taking flight for the big, bustling city of light and opportunities.
They left on the cusp of dawn, cart rattling along the bumpy road beneath the flame-scored sky. The city swallowed them whole and left nothing in their wake. Their new apartment- far, far too small for two- was flanked by a slaughterhouse and a river the color of lead. On hot summer days the reek seeped in, no matter what you did to try and deter it; flowers, candles (the expensive kind, that could’ve bought two days worth of meals), keeping the windows shut though it was sweltering inside, none worked. They filled the little flat with laughter anyways, made a home within the barren walls, scurrying roaches and all.
This much is true.
He found work first, unloading shipments at the dock. She’d wrinkle her nose in exaggerated disgust when he came in after a long day, stinking of sweat and the wood of the crates he’d hauled around all day, squeal when he fake-lunged at her playfully. She followed soon after, picking up work at a bar (she missed the train during those first few months more times than she’d care to admit) that carried the rancidity of alcohol and vomit covered by the tacky, heady scent from a cheap diffuser. The city was loud and fast and messy and they grew to love it anyways.
This much is true.
They’d take long strolls in the parks, in the streets- anywhere, really- and talk for hours about everything and nothing at all. He proposed one night as dusk fell, kissing her breathless under flickering street lights when she sobbed a “yes” and threw herself into his arms. He promised her forever, as the stars glittered coldly above them.
This much is true.
When war came, he went because he believed he should, or maybe because he didn’t know how not to. She kissed him when they woke up that morning, kissed him in the kitchen, at the front door, right before he boarded the train. He accepted the sweets and extra pairs of socks that she pressed into his hands as she told him to write, please write. He slid the window of his compartment open as the train sped away, sticking his head and shoulders through the gap to wave at her rapidly shrinking form. Then the train left the station and he was gone.
This much is true.
His first letter arrived within days of his departure- full of warmth and dust and talk of home. The parcel was fit to burst with the tales of camaraderie and bravery he’d filled it with. She wrote back at once, with more socks, a scarf to keep him warm, and heaps and heaps of love. As war sunk its claws in, his letters got shorter and more infrequent. Paper rationing, he told her. That, and the post office was being swamped by all the letters going back and forth. Increasingly, his letters began fixating on the wedding they’d have when he got back- a simple ceremony with a few friends and family to bear witness as they vowed to remain together for the rest of their lives. He was careful to avoid any talk of what was going on in the front, telling her not to fret when she questioned his sudden silence on the subject. She soon learned to drop it too, focus on what they had instead of what they didn’t.
This much is true.
Then his letters stopped coming at all. The next thing she knew, she was tearing open an envelope from the mail; a folded piece of paper, a name she knew, a war she did not. He would not be coming back- forever was a lie after all. The city seemed colder after that, cold and empty and terrifying. The towering buildings now loomed over her, more threatening than oddly charming in that slightly rakish way that was reminiscent of him. She missed the train to work for the first time in years, collapsed onto the same bench they’d sat together before he left for the last time, wept until night fell as the stars glittered coldly above her.
This much is true.
So she packed her things. Left the apartment. Stepped onto the next train home (was it still home anymore?). Nobody was waiting for her at the station. The town looked exactly as it had when she left it. Her parents said nothing when she showed up at their front door. Her room was exactly as she’d left it, the door left slightly ajar, the bedsheets rumpled just slightly from where she’d laid on them one last time before leaving, all those years ago. Her old friends greeted her excitedly, marvelling at how she’d changed since she left, joking as though she’d been here the whole time.
This much is true.
The year sped by. The war ended (if only it had ceased earlier, maybe, just maybe, she wouldn’t have been so utterly, wretchedly alone in the town she used to call home), she found a job doing paperwork for a betting company in an office that smelled of ink and paper and cigarette smoke. She met an old classmate of hers and after a short chat he asked if she would like to join him at a bar that evening (apparently everyone who had been in that class was going). She accepted, of course, and they drank all night long, exchanging just slightly embellished tales, and little quips that sent the other spiralling into fits of laughter. The sun was just beginning to rise when she finally stumbled home.
They continued to see each other regularly over the next few months. He, as expected, eventually got down on one knee and asked her to make him the happiest man alive. She accepted, of course, let him slip a ring onto her finger that she wished didn’t feel so painfully wrong.
It’s good. This is good. Everything is fine. He’s a devoted husband, and she loves him.
This much is-
She closes her eyes. Doesn’t finish the thought,
Third Place: The Sky's Nightlight by Anechka Estrada
Your hands were warm. They were warmer than a campfire on a quiet night in the forest, at least to me. I would’ve held them until the stars stopped shining if I could, but I could merely feel them for a second as you gave me a high-five.
“I did it!” You announced to me, as giddy as a child. “I did it, Moon!” You were jumping so high you almost touched the clouds, which surprised me. I didn’t expect that you’d have so much energy after running 5 whole laps around our school’s football field.
“You sure did!” I started jumping too. Seeing you so happy filled me with more joy that candy would bring to a toddler’s tongue. “I’m so happy for you, B.” B. I took pride in that nickname. It’s the one I gave to you only a week after we met, yet it seemed to have stuck to you like honey. And now, you remind me of everything that starts with b. Butterflies, bees, bellflowers, everything. They were nice reminders of you, especially on the days when my heart would ache for your presence.
“Hey, wait, doesn’t this mean you make it to the finals?” One of your friends asked.
“Oh, it does!!!” You yelled excitedly. Your eyes lit up like torches and your smile was as wide as a cruise ship. “Sorry, Moon, I gotta go. I have to prepare as soon as possible!”
And like that, you were gone. I watched you run off past the crowd of people, their voices growing louder every step you take away from me.
“Bye, B!” I yell, wishing you’d hear me. “...I love you, B.” I then whisper, wishing the opposite.
I turn around and trot to the bench right behind me. I start watching the other events of the day play out. High jump, long jump, something else jump, pondering what I should do, where I should go. All of my events were already finished, though I didn’t sign myself up for many, since I didn’t find myself to be quite so sporty. I find more solace in the magic of poetry. Letting words my mouth couldn’t speak pour out onto the page like a waterfall onto a crystal clear lake. Everything and anything I wanted to express was written down with similes, alliteration and rhymes. That’s what appealed to me the most.
That’s when it hit me. I could write a poem for you! I could finally confess my burning love to you! The love that my heart wanted to scream, yet my mind wouldn’t dare to murmur. I sprinted past coaches and athletes, past my own friends and their parents, past everybody, to the nearest bathroom. I opened and then slammed the door behind me. My eyes ran around the room. I was alone. Good.
I pulled out my compact, blue Sacbook Air. I placed my hand on its sticker-covered lid and pulled it open, and started writing as if I’d never get to write again.
My sunshine
When my skin is cold and the clouds are gray,
You, my sunshine, brighten up my day,
Oh, my love, how is your touch so warm?
How is it that your smile can fight off any storm?
It’s like magic, the way that your smile makes me feel better,
You, my sunshine, no matter the weather,
You make my heart skip a beat, or two, or three,
But then it starts beating even faster whenever your almond eyes look at me.
So I have one thing to say, something that lingers in my mind,
That you, my sunshine, are the light of my life,
Thought it’s the most blissful pain I’ve ever felt, it still remains true,
It is the grandest honor that I get to love you.
Signed:
…I couldn’t sign it. I tried to write the letters “Moon” but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I heard echoes of snickers and giggles and, worst of all, your taunting voice mocking me.
“Oh, seems someone’s in love with me!” You’d laugh, a laugh that brought me so much delight suddenly stabbing me like a knife, “Y’know, you’re kinda adorable. Adorably pathetic!” The laughing would bounce off the walls and into my ears, eventually flooding my mind. Tears would roll down my cheeks and block my speech.
“I… I–”
My vision starts to become clearer, and I find myself in the bathroom again. I look down at my computer screen, specifically at the blank space where I’d sign my name. Instead, however, I gave you a little clue.
Signed: The sky’s nightlight
I noticed that a lot of time has passed since I started writing. Approximately 30 minutes. I hesitantly send you my poem through a new email, and close my laptop.
“Moon! Where were you?” You questioned, sweat dripping down your forehead from the blazing sun.
“Sorry, haha, I had to take a quick bathroom break.”
“Quick?!” One of your friends chimed in, “You were in there for longer than forever! Did you eat TacoRing or something?” We all quickly shared a laugh. I laughed the loudest, hoping that the noise would drown out my nerves. Abruptly, your phone pinged from your pocket.
“Dude, did you keep that in your pocket while you were running??” A different friend of yours inquired as you scrolled through your phone.
“Haha, no, of course no–” You suddenly stopped and your eyes grew wider with confusion. “Who is ‘someoneyoutotallydontknow1233?’” For a writer like myself, I definitely could’ve chosen a better username. Nonetheless, I felt my heart trying to break out of my ribcage. My face heated up and I could feel myself turning ruby red, but I tried to push it down.
You opened up the attachment to the email and I saw your eyes scan through the text.
“Oh my gosh…” You finally murmured, your face turning such a beautiful shade of pink it could rival a peony. “It’s a love poem… for me.”
“DUUUDE, NO WAY!” All of your friends quickly swarmed behind you, trying to read the text. I could hear all the little comments like, “That’s so cool!” or “Aw, so sweet!” I could feel the crack of a smile form on my face.
“Woah! Who is it signed from?” I sheepishly asked, hoping to hide my anxiety.
“I have no clue…” You reply, looking perplexed, “It just says ‘The sky’s nightlight.’ It’s a shame though, I’d love to know who wrote this. It’s beautiful…” I knew you wouldn’t get it. Although you will always be the light of my life, you aren’t always the brightest.
I could barely believe it. You loved my poems. You felt special, and loved… Those are the feelings I always wanted to give you. So from then on, I continued to write you poems. Poems about how I longed to be with you, how I’d give you the world, how you were my everything. Each word I wrote leading me one step closer to telling you the truth.
It was the night of the End-Of-Year ball. I came in a glittery silver dress with lace at the bottom and on the sides. It flowed like a river and shone like the disco ball above me. I felt gorgeous. Although, I don’t think I could’ve rivaled you. You wore a white tuxedo with a bright blue bowtie and the prettiest shoes I have ever seen. Yet your face is still what caught my attention.
I had written one more poem for you that night. But it would be different this time. This time, I was no longer The Sky’s Nightlight, yet simply Moon. I was going to tell you. Finally.
I walked towards a figure whom I assumed to be you. I went over everything I had planned, I thought of our future. A future where it would finally be us against the world. I would be able to live what was once a silly dream.
I look down and notice you’re holding someone’s hand. Possibly a relative, an older sister or an aunt. Yet I look closer and notice that her skin is fairly lighter than yours. I then look up and get met with an unfamiliar face. One that looked nothing like yours. She was smiling. You were smiling. You were both smiling together.
At once I feel a knife pierce my heart. I was too late.
B, if you’re reading this right now, I want you to know that I am so, so happy for you. Seeing you be so joyful is truly an honor. I hope she holds your hand and it reminds her of a campfire on a quiet night in the forest. I hope she loves you more than anything. But please know that nothing could ever love you more than I do.
Signed: The sky’s nightlight Moon
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