As the last frosts of winter melt away into the verdant embrace of May, a different kind of
blooming has taken place creatively at the European School Luxembourg II. Its students have
been nurturing seeds of thought and watering them with imagination: The Pupils’ Voice is
delighted to announce that the winners are finally in, and published on 13 Stars.
Our Spring Writing Competition, centered on the evocative and poignant theme of “Rebirth,”
drew an extraordinary array of talent. We asked for creative interpretation, and you answered
with fireworks of inspiration. The submissions we received were diverse, and simply put,
genuinely beautiful, rendering the competition fierce.
Selecting the winners was no easy feat. Our judges were moved by the depth of emotion, the
precision of the language, and the daring ways in which you interpreted the cycle of new
beginnings.
We would like to extend our heartfelt congratulations to the winners! Your voices stood out for
their clarity, resonance, and technical skill. It is one thing to have an idea, and it is another
entirely to craft it into a story or poem that breathes on the page. Through this competition, you
have captured the very essence of spring.
We are thrilled to publish the winners in this article. As a pan-European newspaper, 13 Stars
serves as a bridge between our many cultures and languages. By sharing your work here, your
stories and poems will travel across borders, reaching peers from Brussels to Luxembourg and
beyond.
To every student who participated: thank you. Whether you won a prize or simply took the leap
to submit, you have practiced the most vital part of rebirth, which is the courage to start
something new. Without further ado…
JUNIORS (S1-S4)
Junior 1st place: “I’d Hate to be a Phoenix” by Oriana Mitsouridou, S4ELA, ESL2
I’d hate to be a phoenix
I’d hate to be reborn every time I die
I’d hate to never rest from life’s endless pain
I’d hate to be so close to death, to release, to freedom
Just for life to bring me back like I am a toy, and it’s an engineer
I want to be free, I want to have an ending,
I like to know it all comes down to fate
A phoenix has eternity to think of its mistakes
It has eternity to regret, to cry and scream in pain
But I don’t know how long I have, and that’s exactly how I want it
For death is kind to us, we just don’t understand it
It’s life that hurts us, life that takes and takes and takes
Death just waits till it’s his time
Till the life we say we love decides it doesn’t want us
Life is cruel and life is mean
Phoenixes picked the short straw as it seems
For coming back to this world is hell, a hell we all live in
The phoenixes endure life harder than the rest of us
They fly above it all; above the war, above the starving, above the insecurities
They see it all and live it all and close their eyes in vain
They can’t change anything about their way of life
They must live and live and live without a single break
I’d hate to be a phoenix
Junior 2nd place: “Dandelions” by Zoe Kiss, S1ENC, ESL2
Junior 3rd place: “The Space in Between” by Emily Charitos, S4ENC, ESL2
The first thing Mira noticed was silence. Not peaceful, the kind that settles over a sleeping
house, but a hollow, echoing quiet, like the world had inhaled and forgotten how to breathe out.
She opened her eyes. Earth cracked.
For a moment, she didn’t move. Her body felt… new. Not stiff, not sore, just unfamiliar, like
wearing someone else’s skin. She lifted her hands, turning them in the dull light. No scars. No
bruises. They were gone.
The thought flickered, then slipped away.
Mira sat up.
Around her stretched nothing. The ground was fractured like broken glass. In the distance, ruins
leaned against the horizon like tired ghosts.
“What happened?” she whispered.
Her voice sounded steady. Too steady.
She pushed herself to her feet. No dizziness. No weakness. Just balance. Perfect balance.
That’s not normal, she thought. Or maybe it is now.
The sky shifted slightly, clouds dragging across it like smudged charcoal. For a second, she
thought she saw something move within them, but when she blinked, it was gone.
“Hello?” she called.
No answer. Of course not.
She began to walk.
Each step felt deliberate, like the ground was listening. Cracks beneath her feet glowed faintly,
fading as soon as she moved past them.
Time passed strangely. The sky never changed. The ruins didn’t get closer.
Finally, she stopped.
“This is pointless”, she muttered.
A voice answered.
“Only if you think it is.”
Mira spun around.
Someone stood behind her. She was sure no one had been there before.
The figure was familiar, like a half-remembered dream.
“Who are you?” Mira asked.
The figure tilted their head. “That depends. Who are you?”
Mira frowned. “I asked first.”
“And you didn’t answer.”
She stopped.
Who am I?
The question should have been easy. A name, a history, something. Instead, there was only a
blank space.
“I’m…” she began, then faltered.
The figure watched her, not unkindly.
“It’s alright,” they said. “Most people don’t remember right away.”
“Remember what?”
The figure gestured around them. “This.”
Mira looked at the broken earth, the endless grey sky.
“This doesn’t tell me anything.”
“It tells you everything,” the figure replied.
Mira crossed her arms. “That’s not helpful.”
A faint smile touched the figure’s lips. “You’re impatient. That’s consistent.”
“Consistent with what?”
“With who you were.”
Mira stepped closer. “Then tell me.”
The figure studied her.
“You burned,” they said finally.
Mira blinked. “What?”
“You burned. Slowly. You pushed yourself past every limit. You ignored the warnings. You told
yourself you could handle it.”
A strange tightness formed in Mira’s chest.
“ I don’t remember that,” she said.
“You won’t,” the figure said gently. “Not yet.”
“Yet?”
“It’s the place in between.”
“Between what?”
The figure’s gaze softened.
“Between who you were and who you choose to become.”
Mira let out a small laugh. “That’s very poetic, but it doesn’t actually explain anything.”
“It will,” the figure said. “When you’re ready to see it.”
“And if I’m not?”
“Then you’ll stay here,” they said simply.
Mira looked out at the empty world again.
“Stay here doing what?” she asked.
“Walking,” the figure said. “Questioning. Searching for something you can’t quite name.”
“That sounds awful.”
“It can be,” the figure admitted. “But it doesn’t have to be.”
Mira turned back to them. “ Then what do I do?”
The figure stepped closer.
“Start small,” they said. “Find one thing you want to carry forward.”
“Carry forward where?”
“Wherever you go next.”
Mira hesitated.
“One thing.”
“Yes.”
She thought about the blank space where her past should be. The faint sense she had been
more than this emptiness.
“What if I choose wrong?” she asked quietly.
The figure shook their head.
“You can’t.”
“That’s not how choices work.”
“In the world you came from, maybe,” they said. “But here? Every choice is a beginning.”
Mira looked down at her hands again.
They didn’t feel like someone else’s anymore.
They felt like hers.
Slowly, she took a breath.
“I think” she began, then stopped.
The word hovered.
“I think I want to keep trying,” she said.
The moment the words left her lips, the ground flared with light.
Cracks filled with gold, spreading outward. The grey sky split into blue.
Mira gasped.
The ruins straightened, rebuilding piece by piece. The air shifted, carrying the scent of rain.
She turned back to the figure.
But they were already fading.
“Wait! ”Mira reached out.
The figure smiled.
“That’s enough,” they said. “For now.”
“Will I see you again?”
“Every time you forget,” they replied. “And every time you remember.”
Then they were gone.
Mira stood alone.
But the silence was different now.
It wasn’t empty.
It was waiting.
She took a step forward.
This time, the world moved with her.
SENIORS (S5-S7)
Senior 1st place: “Tristan” by Adriana Gospodinova, S7ENC, ESL2
“We are born blind. Most of us live like the crazy who believe they’re sane in repeating actions
without meaning, searching for no other purpose. In death we are still blindfolded. Though the
cycle continues, in death and rebirth, I will hope to be less blind if I must come back to this Earth
again.” -Tisha
A loud birth under the radiant rains of another dreamy November sludging by,
I was brought, with another whose name started with ‘T’, into a chaotic world, where we were
both blind.
In childhood, through naïve days, we would write our names on each other’s palm,
Rolling in innocence when the letter would look like the cross carried by our grandparents
In an outdated leather pouch to a place we knew only as the house of Weddings and Death.
Born on the same day, but streets apart, we would lie on benches writing confessions, plant
them
Under the tree in our garden (mine a willow, his a pine) and let them lie for Time to observe.
Loveliness does not apply to a child’s eyes; beauty and scars are alike until adults set them
apart.
He had lovely eyes for some, normal for those of poor taste,
but I saw them always as two big smiles on a crackless mirror of imagination and beliefs.
Then what is a kiss on another’s lips when still ten? What of an oddity adults call ‘love’,
present but never clearly defined? Perhaps an uncomprehending curiosity let free?
No.
A child’s perfection of blindness in love, the taste of playgrounds, roundabouts,
Trips to a nameless lake, summer campfires and the happiness of a boy called Tristan
in the centre of a sweaty parking lot on an August Sunday.
Forgive me, but I will hold back no more that I did see him once, in truth.
Such a given blindness is yours until you choose to disown it, once you recognise a chance at
rebirth.
Blindness of love, happiness, trust, anticipation and silent dreams: I renounce this in death,
For you truly only ever see someone when you have been separated by some unwritten ‘Fate’.
Should my heart-stopping brother, who reluctantly grew up within me, a stern Kawasaki by
name,
Have given me more time to play outside, I would have hurt more but pained less in parting.
At ten, my heart slowed its beat, letting the blood it had been holding back glide in a bursting
stream
To eyes I had never used, until that journey to the top of a golden hill overlooking a singing
ocean.
Tristan’s hair was coppery from a racetrack painted above his held-up arms, a crossroads of
white,
Purple, pink and blue.
His eyes are not smiles anymore: they are an upturned hill, with two little commas for fish,
One for him and one for me; we met in a wide ocean, bubbling a conversation then leaving
To lap the island once more until we meet again in different bodies and a new life.
Death is so peaceful; a lapping darkness caressing you to sleep when you are fortunate enough
To not be left to pass away on a cold floor, but with fingers intertwined in Tristan’s ones on a
mattress,
In a room on a summer evening, where the soft beats of a frog sonata lull you into a longer
dream.
When I awoke, I found myself on that island, dancing on Tristan’s smile, looking down at the fish
at my feet,
Watching silently from a mound of gold overlooking a river winding into the breaking dawn
where,
somewhere
Along the warm shores, walks a jaded soul trapped in the body of a ten-year-old,
Calling out for me to live again for him with tears in his smiling eyes.
Senior 2nd place: “Rebirth” by Aya Bana, S6FRE, ESL2
I did not say goodbye.
There was no time.
Only the sound of bombs
and my mother calling my name.
We left in the dark,
carrying almost nothing,
but fear followed us
like a shadow.
The road was full of people
who looked like me—
tired, silent,
and broken inside.
I stopped counting the days.
I only knew one thing:
we had to move
or we would disappear.
They said Europe
was safe.
A place where
life begins again.
But safety felt strange.
No noise, no fire—
just silence
and memories.
At school, I said nothing.
Words were too heavy.
I was there,
but not really alive.
Then one day,
someone smiled.
She asked my name
and waited for my answer.
It was a small moment,
but something changed.
For the first time,
I felt seen.
I learned new words,
slowly,
like building a bridge
step by step.
My parents smiled again.
Not like before—
but enough
to give me hope.
I still remember everything.
War does not leave you.
But it does not own me.
I am still here.
Still standing.
And maybe that is rebirth,
Like the first light after a long winter.
Senior 3rd place: “Makeup Smudges” by Alexia Löchner-Ernst, S5DEA, ESL2
I could feel her fingers rubbing my scalp, her nails gliding through my hair.
Her movements were a caress on my head, whispering soothing promises above me. Dangling
opportunities I wished to reach in front of me, and leading me the way while doing so.
I had never been a very assertive person. Never sure what to do with myself during interviews,
never certain of what to say to make someone laugh (with me not at me).
I was the type of person to smile awkwardly at a joke I didn’t quite understand, nod
enthusiastically when someone said something I didn’t catch and pray to god my improvised
response was appropriate. I caught myself one too many times adding an unnecessary ‘I’m not
really sure but…’ or ‘…if that makes sense’ in a sentence.
I was the type of coworker people asked favors of, knowing I wouldn’t refuse – the kind of friend
who has a ‘great personality once you get to know her’.
I had always been like this. In the early stages of puberty, my younger self hoped it was just one
of Mother Nature’s cruel ways, that I would grow into my own skin, learn how to do my makeup
properly without smudging it with my fingers. In my young adulthood I convinced myself that it
had something to do with maturity and experience, that I would learn along the way. I started
keeping my makeup simple, you can’t smudge something that isn’t there.
Nowadays I stopped wearing makeup entirely.
Recently, though, something changed. After months of heavy snow and rain, the air had begun
to soften. Trees that had stood bare merely three weeks ago, now carried the first signs of
spring. Quiet but undeniable.
I’m not sure when it started but I could feel it brewing inside of me. A silent voice growing louder.
I was in a restaurant yesterday. Celebrating a friend’s birthday. Through the window, the evening
light stretched longer than it had in months, dipping every building and tree in gold.
This friend was a very dear friend of mine and my complete opposite. Where I stayed silent she
spoke louder; when I apologised, she demanded. She wore her makeup without any smudges.
And during her birthday dinner we talked (as one usually does), I mentioned the need for
change that has blossomed in me recently. The way I wanted to start putting makeup on again
and maybe cut my hair. She just smiled and handed me a phone number.
So that’s why I was sitting here, feeling her fingers on my head. Her promising gaze meeting
mine through the mirror. She smiled and held her hands up to my chin.
“Here?”
I nodded, “I want it all gone.” Like the first bloom after a long heavy winter – making room for
what came next.
“Anything else darling?” She asked with a thick British accent that took me a minute to decipher.
“Do you guys do makeup?”
Cover image by: arno smit$ from Unsplash
Edited by: Julia Dec
