*Author note: This story was originally published on Medium. Follow this link to read it there, and I might even make a couple of cents from it.
Before ego played into everything I did and waiting for acceptances felt like a second job, it was me and this rural mailbox in middle-of-nowhere Kentucky. I had a piece of string shutting the lips of it that felt like tenuous hope waiting to unravel. Tying it up in the rare case a rogue wind threw it open and blew my masterpiece out to a nearby pasture because why not: I was paranoid because I cared. Paranoia wrapped up the joy I’ve been searching for since.
…
I am almost 13, visiting my cousin for a few weeks in Kentucky. I hold some poetic notions about how everything in Kentucky looked dark and gnarled and twisted. This town she lives in is one of those that only has a Wal-Mart, so of course we’re going there recreationally, intent on buying something vaguely disappointing to our parents. And because mine are all the way back in Georgia, I head straight for the two-piece swimsuits and teen magazines. My aunt won’t mind as much as mom.
I find an off-brand teen magazine and pick it up from a sordid display because I don’t know what else to get. I am homeschooled, read all the classics but found a quote somewhere saying the secret to great writing was reading everything, including pure trash. Not just the British novelists and the American poets, but the magazines. I salivate at the thought of indulging in something so vapid.
I look out the cigarette-smoke-stained windows as my aunt drives us back down one-lane roads, catching the secondhand from the minimally ventilated car, dying to read my magazine instead but fearing the car-sickness because the smoke makes my throat feel green and full with nausea. We barely pull up the half-mile gravel driveway and I crack it open, still vaguely sick.
The brash, saturated colors of the early aughts excite me in magazine form, where advertising for lip balms and clear mascaras come alive. Pages that dance instead of drone. Suddenly, my life means little more than preparing for prom and learning how to kiss, and oh my god it’s delicious and I’m feeling better.
Now I flip to the back and got hit in the face with who I am again. “Poetry Contest!” I read the magenta and cerulean lettering out loud. My stomach and throat flutter because I know immediately — I am going to do it. I’m always getting nervous for that reason. I’m always going to do it.
I read the instructions an ungodly number of times trying to ground myself with the details to keep me from flying into hypomania at all the possibilities that would release the moment I get this out the door. “Fill out your name, name of submission, address, phone number and a short bio. Best of luck!”
But what about the poem? I actually wrote one a while back, sealed between locked journals in my nightstand drawer. Mom and Dad haven’t read it. I wouldn’t dare. It makes me look like a Wiccan tree hugger or something. I’ll get thrown out of church. I flush at the thought of it being out in the open.
Baring down hard with every word in purple ink and pure earnest, I write it outside on the picnic table away from prying eyes. I had committed every word to memory and need to get it down, more and more neatly each time until it’s the official copy I’m going to send in along with the instructions I just clipped from the magazine. I get there after what seems like fifty tries of fighting the wood grain, wind and splinters.
Finally, I closed it into the envelope with a prayer. It doesn’t hold the same weight when it’s not weighed and stamped and snail-mailed, so if I’m allowed to be anachronistic, shame on that Submittable button.
Now I’m standing there, facing the mailbox. I make sure everyone else is inside and occupied because this looks fucking ridiculous. No one else even knows I’m entering this contest, but they’ll know if and when (and what if?!) I win.
I try the mailbox latch to make sure it closes securely because the wind blows briskly today. The postman came earlier, so this has to sit here for 22 or so more hours. I find a piece of string outside and wind it around to secure it. Make sure you put the flag up, make sure you put the flag up, I tell myself.
Is the address I put my home address so when they send the good news, it’s not coming here? Or the bad news. I don’t want my aunt to open it and read this poem. She might laugh and tell my mom. I reopen the envelope, confirm everything and start this painstaking operation again, fighting time before someone sees this comedy sketch, but I’m committed to the bit.
…
It took two months to get the acceptance in my mailbox at home in Georgia and more like one year to uncover the scam. Everything else submitted got in, so I grew suspicious until internet use grew enough that I had full access to research. Looks like they accepted everybody, for the low-low cost of $29.99 per hardcover book. For just $19 more, I could have the whole anthology, lining my bookshelves with myself and all the other losers who won.
But somehow I don’t recall the heartbreak of finding them out as much as I remember the care that went into my first-ever work. I close my eyes when I need to see it again. And I’m returning to the surge of joy at being in a strange place, trying something new, my hope tied around that mailbox like the string that kept my poem safe and my future awake.
© Maggie McCombs 2024. All Rights Reserved.
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