Letters From Our Finalists
Contents 1
Mourning Al Yeske at Wethersfield Village Cemetery During a Pandemic By Laura Desmarais
2
Dear London
4
Dear Jay
6 7
Ode To The Toilet
By Dominic Collingridge
By Rachel Koh
By Justin Li
Dear Sirs By Shoaib Sumar
8
To The One Looking Ahead
9
A Dispatch From Quarantine
11
My Dearest Rosie
By Anonymous
By Steven K. Howell
By Noni Trisha Haspari
12
My Favourite Uncle By Chris Cotonou
Mourning Al Yeske at Wethersfield Village Cemetery During a Pandemic By Laura Desmarais
Through my windshield, I watch the silver casket cross to its final rest, lofted on the sad, strong shoulders of the son and nephews. Along the I-91 horizon, trucks process in whispering prayer. Sun streams through vaulted, bare branches. Dead ahead, the priest’s masked words weave over and under threads of wind, accompanied by the gentle gestures of his gloved hands. The widow stands as erect and socially distant as her abandoned walker. From the parking lot, I offer the sign of a heart then drive home alone.
Dear London By Dominic Collingridge
Dear London, It has been three months now to the day since we last saw each other. It seems hard to believe that we are already here… June, and what a lot has happened; too much almost to say in a letter, but you feel it too I’m sure. My main cause for writing is to tell you how much I miss you. I wonder what you have been doing with your time since we last saw each other… How are you feeling about everything that is going on? Myself… Well, Monday to Friday I’m working at home, and it feels in many respects normal, although oddly enough work has never been so busy. I suppose I should be grateful that I still have a job, alas that fear of ‘what if this continues,’ lingers overhead like a cloud one can’t quite decide if it is worth taking the umbrella out for, the risk of potential rain a palpable threat cutting through the air. Before starting work I leave the house early and go for a walk on Hampstead Heath. I start down through the shaded seclusion of Fitzroy Park with its vast and mysterious gated houses, past the allotments, and on to the expanse of open landscape. Here I feel our separation most palpably, for this landscape could not be more different to you. For you are a violent jolt, a ceaseless, dazzling spark of energy, which enters the body and lives within the cells for hours afterwards. You fill one with a longing for more, for a desire to be in it, a part of it, at one with it. The Heath, beautiful in its own comparatively opposite way has a practically meditative effect, soothing the soul and slowing one down. It is a pastoral world, I half expect to see cows or hear the galloping of horses behind me. When there are no people to date the space it seems timeless, I look up occasionally and expect to see Keats and Brawne, strolling together in search of the Nightingale. In the mornings there are of course many dogs, of such a variety that over the past few weeks alone I have witnessed species I had never previously seen. Second to the dogs are the dashing, panting, glistening bodies in lycra, who weave through the gaps between myself and my fellow walkers, they seemingly have their own rules for social distancing. Others, the slower species of human manoeuvre themselves softly, languorously through the dappled pathways, under the trees, past the lakes, over the meadows, stopping to take it all in…Perhaps I look like one of them My favourite part of this journey is walking through the woodland towards Kenwood, which was to my dismay closed until the beginning of June, the glorious splash of colour from the rhododendrons was nothing more than a smudge of green and brown when the gates opened once again, but at least I was able to see the glittering white magnolia at its best in March. I sit a while by the Henry Moore statue, making the most of the fresh air and silence, before I have to return home to my dining table and lock myself into back-to-back Zoom calls for the day. As I leave the grounds and walk up towards the Kitchen Garden I see a flash, a cameo of a lost and forgotten landscape, jagged and varied… it is you London. I wonder, do you see me? What have your mornings been like over the last few months? I think back to the last full day I spent with you, it was March 15th, a Sunday, and I walked from Highgate down through the Heath, through Kentish Town and Camden, taking a detour through Regents Park before passing back over Euston Road and into the calm squares of Bloomsbury.
I went searching for books on Lambs Conduit Street, then coffee in Seven Dials, before visiting Beaton at the National Portrait Gallery; then through the pulsing artery of Trafalgar Square before cutting across Pall Mall and up to St James’s Square for the London Library, simply to meander through the stacks and bask in the sillage of the brilliant minds trapped between the clothbound pages. Oh, how I think of you longingly now, and everything I miss about you… a Fortnum’s Scotch egg, gazing hungrily through the windows of Piccadilly and Burlington Arcade, making lists in my head of things I will buy in a few years. I miss haunting softly through Savile Row, fantasising over a time when my name will be sealed in the ledgers which follow the year 2020, a year to end familiarity and routine. I miss the bars and the restaurants, the cafe’s and even the commute… but, most of all I miss you. I have come to realise that of course nothing is certain, and that change throughout life is inevitable. I hope we make it through this change for the better London, and regardless, no matter what happens, I love you, and I can’t wait for the day when I can tell you so in person. Until then, D.
Rachel Koh
Ode To The Toilet By Justin Li
Dearest Adeline, Thank you for your kind note, though I’m afraid you’re a little late. The bank rang about some ‘suspicious activity’ within seconds of your sixth online purchase – it is, perhaps, far kinder to support the Italian economy indirectly with donations to hospitals and healthcare personnel than it is to fritter away my ex-savings on, what seems to be, cashmere furniture. I urge you to explore other, less financially ruinous means of beating back the ennui of the great indoors. I, for one, have found renewed literary inspiration - in the daily scatological of all places! I should hope this amuses you appropriately: Ode to the Toilet To perch upon a toilet bowl, One dirty shiny china pan, That sits beneath two rosy cheeks, Is still a joy to all of man. When sat upon the porcelain throne, The peasant is himself a king, The prince becomes of lowly birth, All bound as one by China ring. An’ no one else for company, With man alone in his own seat, To guess, to think, to contemplate, Or simply look at both his feet. There is, alas, a price to pay, When man commits himself to sit, To while away his golden years, One ounce of gold, its worth in shit. The price is right, the price is fair, A rack of lamb or table scrap, Man can’t but give just as he gets, What gold goes in will out as crap. The toilet is a wondrous thing, Our charity of daily bread, Is honestly, without deceit, Given with grace until we’re dead. Do feel free to be as liberal with your thoughts as you were with my mum. In spite of all of her cognitive decline, she has yet to forget the time you so visibly objected to her abduction of Lucretia and the displeasure she faced from you subsequently, having left us with the bill from the canine behaviourist. The ‘leaden-footed gorgon’ you were so very fond of when we were still married, who, despite constant reminders, remains none the wiser of our little milestone, is well enough despite your lack of concern. With this third week of wretched confinement sweatily heaving itself upon us, all that was ready to drink has already been drunk. I fear soon we shall have to lay siege to the good stuff, though I suspect the ‘82 Chateau Latour will put up a damn good fight - all six litres of it. Trust you are twice as well, half as bored, and a damn sight less drunk. Stay safe and keep well. All the best to you and yours, Aloysius Ormsby-Gore
Dear Sirs By Shoaib Sumar M/s H. Huntsman & Sons, 126, New Bond Street, London, W1S 1DZ.
Dear Sir, I am writing to inquire after a suit I had commissioned the Friday before last at your esteemed establishment. I was attended to by a Mr. Mason who helped me select the cloth and subsequently ushered me towards one Mr. Hammick to have my measurements taken. You, or certainly Mr. Mason, will remember the cloth – made from a fine Super 150’s wool – a charcoal grey cloth in a subtle herringbone weave. “Freshly procured from the finest Mill in the land up in Huddersfield,” he had assured me. Now, I fully understand that the very next day following my visit the news broke out that this dreadful influenza, this ghastly Spanish Flu, as the papers are calling it, has now infiltrated the British Isles. Scores of soldiers returning from the trenches in northern France brought it with them, they say. Trust the French to send us so unpleasant a gift.
Yet I wondered, despite all this, if I may drop by next Thursday afternoon for my first fitting? You see, a gentleman such as myself cannot be made to remain indoors for so prolonged a spell. Confinement, by its very nature, is ungentlemanly. Moreover, despite being blessed with a respectable repertoire of bespoke suits which I wear daily as I embark on that treacherous journey downstairs from my bedroom to my study, I find there is a certain something missing from my collection; a pièce de résistance, if you will. Perhaps this work of Mr. Hammick’s renowned craftsmanship will serve me well to this end. “You’ve finally lost your marbles,” the lady of the house reproached me, when I informed her of my intentions at breakfast. “This is no common cold we’re dealing with - even the Prime Minister was not spared the wrath of this pandemic!” Poor soul, bless her, my dear wife, for although she is a God-fearing woman, even she knows deep down that her endless cups of tea can go only so far towards curing me of this malaise; for a gentleman’s heart yearns for something much stronger.
As for Mr. Lloyd George, the poor sod has been shaking so many greasy liberal hands these past few months it is no wonder he contracted the disease. Surely the coalition government is using this influenza, La Grippe as they call it across the channel, as an excuse to keep the general public confined to their houses and out of their way whilst a herculean post-war clean-up and rebuilding operation is undertaken across the country. One solitary gentleman journeying sartorially a mere two and a half miles will cause no inconvenience whatsoever to their efforts. I am quietly confident that were I to even exhibit the symptoms – a fever, a sore throat, a headache and a loss of appetite (this last symptom quite impossible in my case) – there is no ailment for which my good friend Robert Cavendish of No. 23 Harley Street cannot prescribe a cure. His cures tend to range from a shot of warm whiskey (“the best painkiller known to man”) to a glass of ginger ale, a spot of quinine and some sliced onions scattered around the house. A true master of his trade.
Therefore, my dear sir, I request you to kindly confirm my appointment. I will arrive at my usual hour following some business I must attend at Sotheby’s where I will have luncheon. With you, as I did on my previous visit, I will take tea.
Yours faithfully, Nathaniel H. Darwin
To The One Looking Ahead By Anonymous
To the one looking ahead, I’ll try to explain this to you as honestly as I can. The moon dusted roar of my revelation—what you already knew, but were too desperate to admit. You sat up at night, dream struck, eyes tossed to the stars—ice-crystals ground up, wondrously scattered—only your eyes also flew past, into the far blackness. And what greeted you, waiting so perfectly there? Fear. Nothing but. Only just. Remember how all you wished for, secretly, other consciously, in the scarlet caverns of your heart, was the power to grasp hold of it: to have all Destiny laid out in mapwork by your side, right then and there. A chrysalis of frozen time. Well, since the virus—time has frozen, in away. I don’t know what else to say. So, I’ll listen instead. To the quakes in your gut. They lacked blood. They wanted to devour the world. Twenty, going on twenty-one. College? Grades? Graduation?Employment? Friends, girlfriends? Happiness. If only—you would appeal, and don’t deny it—if only you had it all, preassembled in your palms, you could finally stop worrying. You could stop dreaming before dusk. You’d be happy. Then you were forced to let go. You and everyone else. A nation, an entire planet, cut free and cast twirling into the limbo of what-will? what-if? what, why? There are men with smaller mouths to feed. Women with plump bellies kicking with life. War heroes haired quicksilver, gazing still and silent at the wired-shut gates of their homes—even now at attention, peering out for that invisible enemy to trespass and swipe away the last breaths from their sleeping friends. Your letting-go is merciful, tenderly vital, a vein in the blood web of a primate race still learning to draw water from the well without stumbling, drowning. All that control, cautious balance—where would it really get you? Someplace permanent and pacific, a float of foam over a vast and misty sea. Measure the lulls in your pulse: any moment now a deep-earthen bone could shiver to wake a volcano in a heaven wide sigh of ash and death enter. And when that end inevitably comes, think of what will be left of you. The gravities of your life, the efforts, the strains...A man with skin the hue of ebony died the final Monday of May. You are confused. Let me explain another way: Knee-to-throat, cheek-on-asphalt. A murderer of the most focused degree, and the murderer was an archangel, a servant sworn to protection. Listen. Hear his charge cry and sigh. Watch him search for his mother’s eyes. All that met him then was darkness. Darkness within darkness. Darkness beyond darkness. You’ve learned that in this country the history of ebony drips snowy white with lies, the torture of phantom chains. It calls on fires, streets splitting with bodies, raging souls. The void, after all, is the womb of creation. Only where there is nothing can anything grow uncorrupted. Emptiness, the incubator of purest light, sterile and hopelessly immaculate. Here, all deceit evaporates. The snakes wither in their whispering coils. Take a cue—there’s no shelter for mendacities in our world anymore. The dark, the chaos, comes whether you’re comfortable in your castle of self-deception or not. In the end, entropy will always erupt. You know this. At least, you’ve sensed part of it. ‘Life is the shipwreck of our plans,’ certainly, but ‘Life’ is irrelevant. In fact, it doesn't even exist. Living is our true, watery wandering, from coast to sunburned coast, isle and frost lit aisle, beneath galaxies of magic-spun mystery, teardrops of lightning whipped sorrow... Eventually, all those who choose the journey will find their way. The world’s too big to presage with human eyes. Rather, trust those of the stars you chase. They watch with the vantage of ultimate distances. They guide us afar and eternally home. I’ve said nothing that isn’t already obvious, bone marrow-known. You might feel underwhelmed. You might feel the urge to turn and glance back. Don’t.There's nothing worth hauling there. You’re no longer caught in those dogs. Tat’s only your shadow you see, a universe alien and extinct. Reality starts anew every fresh look we give ourselves. It’s never too late to change, to be better. It’s only too late to wish it went down another way. Take my word for it—Wishes are meant for more wonderful things. So, for the last time: This is you, holding me close. And this is me, letting you go. From the one right here
A Dispatch From Quarantine By Steven K. Howell
From the balcony of my apartment, I look out over a busy Charlotte neighborhood. In the mornings the sun rises through the treetops in the park just across the street, casting long shadows over an intersection always full of commuting cars and people walking to their offices. There’s usually a small congregation at the bus stop down the road, chatting and laughing as their day begins. But these familiar sounds of my street have gone missing, dissipating into an empty silence. Normally, I love the quiet; I cherish the moments when the only sound I hear is the wind brushing through the leaves. I grew up in the country, in the back of a small town subdivision, the type of place where you could still fall asleep to the evensongs of whippoorwills and the occasional barred owl. That’s a peaceful stillness, a silence that sits where it’s meant to be. But here on my street, this is a quiet that’s out of place, a silence born of lives being halted and interrupted. The best decision I’ve made over the last month was taking Twitter off my phone. The staggering amount of infection and death, accompanied by the incompetence and trolling that social media specialize in, beamed into our eyeballs for hours a day can’t be good for our health. You know what you need to know already: it’s going to get worse, no one is immune, social distance, and wash your goddamn hands. Give yourself some permission to tune out the rest. Our government continues to show its ineptitude and corruption of priorities. We were woefully unprepared to test early and seem even more unprepared to treat the sick. Many of our leaders have been negligent at best, corrupt at worst… Unlike where I grew up, it’s tough to see the stars in Charlotte, a sacrifice we make for living here – but you can at least watch the shimmer of aeroplane lights as they circle Charlotte-Douglas International. But with no air traffic, even the sky looks emptier than it normally does. I’ve recently been thinking about the town I grew up in, and not just the luminous night sky, but how this recession will disproportionately hurt rural and minority areas that depend on small business, where the recovery of the 2010’s already left most of them behind. It may be a while yet before I can even visit my own family back home, whom I miss dearly. This past month I’ve gotten great at making stew, a skill vastly underrated in modern life. The best part of cooking stews is that with a creative mind, no two have to be alike; turn your pantry afterthoughts and leftovers into something new. Cook down some onions, sweet potatoes, peppers, and ground turkey in a pot. Add some beans of choice and can of diced tomatoes. Throw whatever the hell you like in there. Season liberally with your own spice blend throughout the cooking process; I personally like cinnamon and ground clove. If you want to stretch it, serve it with rice. P.S. Always cook rice with a little butter – it adds a nutty richness and tastes so much better. Now isn’t the time to count calories. One thing I have learned about myself is that I hate working from home. I work with families and businesses to navigate seasons just like this, so thankfully I’m at no shortage of work to be done. But I’m an extrovert who requires verbal processing, accountability, and the movement of working in physical space with people to reach peak productivity… This is no small adjustment. I’ve been a runner, a generous term for anyone who attempts to “run” occasionally, for most of my adult life. I’ve taken to running twice a day to escape my building, as the hallways start looking more and more like The Shining. It’s reassuring to be able to step into a world of spring renewal, into green space that still blooms with the pastels of dogwoods and crape myrtles, to show me that the world still turns. I’ll gladly take a sinus infection over cabin fever. Over the past couple of years, I have been learning how to see thing differently. Being raised in the South, reading too much Faulkner as a teenager, and being a supporter of Arsenal F.C., pessimism is congenital. But I’ve been slowly learning to let go of thoughts that aren’t useful, like ruminating on the feeling that “happiness” is always elusive. Maybe some ingredient in the recipe has gone missing? That perspective wasn’t serving me anymore. What if all the ingredients of contentedness were before me already, like my lowly stew ingredients, lying around just awaiting acknowledgement? Maybe all of this is an opportunity if we choose to make it so. An opportunity to show warmth to our families we are sheltered with. An opportunity to give ourselves, financially or otherwise, to those in need around us. An opportunity to find gratitude in all things…
And I am grateful. I’m grateful for many things, including, at least in this moment, my health, which is never a future guarantee. To celebrate, maybe I’ll go for another run later on. For now, another sunrise, another quiet morning. In some beautiful, almost ironic, way this absence, this silence, is collective. May it strengthen our resolve. It’s quiet, but from my balcony I can just hear the faint song of birds from the park across the street, nourishing the silence, reminding me in the stillness of home, and that this too shall pass.
My Dearest Rosie By Noni Trisha Haspari
My dearest Rosie, It is quite strange to witness the silence of London. I opened my window to see not a single soul on the street. The crowd is gone, though the birds are still chirping, breaking the silence that’s been haunting the city. Suddenly, it reminds me of something. Do you recall that time when we spent the summer in Bali? We were clueless about why it was so quiet outside. It's if there was an on and off switch for the island. Not long after, we realised that it was the Nyepi Day. It was their day of silence. Perhaps it is now the time for us to take a break from this restless world, just like what they do in the Island of Gods. As far as I know, the virus has forced the world to stop. It creates problems, from the tiniest to the most unpredictable ones. People are drowning their own minds, finding a way to survive this situation, yet here I am enjoying a cup of tea in the afternoon. And it’s chamomile, obviously. All I’m saying is that I, myself, managed to find the light in this situation. I hope that you’ve found your light as well. If you haven’t, please know that I’ll be here to listen, through these letters. At the end of the day, all we have to do is to enjoy what the world has offered. We just have to allow all the worries to walk away and rest assured that better days are ahead. At last, I pray for your well-being. Yours truly, Desiree.
My Favourite Uncle By Chris Cotonou
Dear Uncle John,
You are dead. Gone, kaput; which means I’m writing this letter to a man that can neither read, nor reply back. So, if by some miracle you’re hovering over me as this is typed up, you’ll get the gist of the world you’re currently missing, which is not a place I would like to be, and yet is a place I am (keep up, dear John) and if you still long for this world—I’ll understand, Uncle. The virus took you, but didn’t take all of you.
I would ask you what death is like, now you are two weeks gone. It’s embarrassing to admit this, but I’ve always had a thing for Tarot cards (in particular the Marseilles type) and through various girlfriends, who you may – or may not – have met, some type of spirituality, or obsession for the occult. Yet you remember me as being cautious, a bit of a wise-ass—well, apparently, he writes letters to the dead. Now I’m in confinement, without anyone around, I’ll humour this side of my character! You can read this and you can hear me, and you are not gone. But, you are, aren’t you? Come on, John; make a sign, good man—I’m all ears. (I’ll even add it in.)
There’s loneliness in lockdown, and there’s speaking with the dead. But since I’ve got your ghoulish ear, there is a story I heard about you which I’d not known until you passed away. You saved a man’s life, didn’t you?
Alan Simmons of Someplace, Somewhere, Chichester, West Sussex; lived until he was seventy. Wouldn’t have if you weren’t around, though. If you hadn’t knocked on his door at the exact moment he was going to kill himself, smashed through the window and yanked his head out of the oven door. But you did, and half of Alan Simmons’ life was committed to your friendship, holidays with you and Aunty Maria in Portugal, while the other half he spent watching his kids and grandchildren grow up. He never stopped thanking you for that. You wouldn’t speak about this, Uncle John, and would that I could be half the man you are, with my boastful – silly, and loud – ways. (I would’ve painted it on the walls of the Cathedral.)
We lived in London, and you in the South. You were born in a poor village in Cyprus during days of Empire, and I in the greatest city in the world. You fought, fought, and fought. I inherited all that you and my grandmother worked for. It’s funny, but she showed me some old pictures of you from the seventies, and I have to say, easy tiger — fully bespoke suits, wide collars, some sort of pomade-sculpted hair thing where your head is meant to be; the bling. Lots and lots of bling.
In some ways, I’m suited to a quarantine. Those who live in their heads find nothing particularly inspiring from a walk to the shops, anyway. You used to say I was a bit of a daydreamer. It’s all a matter of perspective I think: this is why good things make me feel bad, and bad things make me feel less guilty. I’m never content with anything: couldn’t work with anyone for more than a year. But you, you stayed in the same barbershop for fifty years – barely had a day off, and didn’t complain, not once. How?
Seriously, how did you do it—and still find time to be happy? Did you know that someone from the Chichester Echo popped into aunties, and asked about your death? He wanted to push the virus story, paint you as a casualty; so, they told him where to stick it. The mayor (one of your customers, apparently) is holding a street-party in your honour, for being an ‘integral and devoted member of the community.’ They’re having a plaque made near your barbershop.
Who on earth has a plaque made for their barbershop? But you – and I – probably know it’s less to do with scissors and brylcreem, and more to do with dedication and hard work.
I wonder how, after all these years, you could stomach doing nothing. It’s impossible to imagine you lounging on one of those mammoth, fat clouds with your feet up just drifting off somewhere… Maybe there’s a divine bar you’ve yet to visit, which serves the most ethereal brandy in the Cosmos. And if Saint Peter allocates everyone a role at the pearly gates, how many haircuts have you given the angels thus far?
Perhaps there is no pearly gates. Maybe you’re gone. Well, good, I say: you wouldn’t have liked it much now, anyway. Now, I’m going to see auntie once this is all over. If anyone’s heard from you it will be her—maybe. Come to think of it, you probably need a break from one another after forty years. It’s all peaches Uncle John, honest, I’ll act like nothing ever happened. If you need someone to vent to, I’m here.
It’s time I wrapped this up. You’re probably rather busy up there. But these are a few things I had to get off my chest before saying goodbye one last time. Sleep easy, and please, please, please — for the love of God… Consider haunting the barbershop across the street. Never liked him much anyway.
Sleep tight, John.
Me’agape, Christos
