"I’m worried that I’m not following/the instructions" & "There is nothing about..." by Cailey Tin

There is nothing about the dirt-smeared past that debates can’t rise from but

people are now distracted with

the argument that this generation

can’t build anything from

the ground up and maybe

every territory has a flag

stamped on its sand and I

have never been one to

argue about its colors—I like

sunshine yellow and sky

blue and being alone

with them, unreachable

with only my unfitting frame

and art traceable from afar

but it turns me red how those

people gut shame the easily

obliging when it should

not be our responsibility to speak

up on the corruption we co-

exist with so before you call

my spirit weak let me say

that history is filled with

weakness and spirits, not in the

way you think. History used to

be my forte until only the dark

skies and thundering

calamities are passed on through

time and I sketched the similarities

between their heaven and their sky

for years ‘cause I couldn’t find

a reference picture I liked because

it had nothing to do with

me. I’m the selfish one when the

debaters / social commanders already

had ground the fitting shape of their

body parts and I envy being a chunk

of something strong; even now, it’s

the silenced ones with soil in their

mouths who taste all the dirt upon

speaking. Grandfather said I must

rise as a leader and a leader

tries to change things and

a leader is precise which

is why they’re almost never

agreeable, then he stubbornly

pinpoints every last drop of my

kindness to hang to dry after

the pouring rain, the airspace not

clouded in blue and not dusted in

yellow; only gray with fogged

up ancestors eyeing down from

wherever they are to wherever

their families are and they only

speak in one tongue, the words

that gave them the immortal bliss

where they can pass down wisdom to

everything below unlike the unluckier

ones in their generation who

put faith in the wrong weather and I

know after having my head up in

the clouds that stories have different

versions which is why I write and

dream that it’s not raining at another

part of the world; maybe that’s where

grandfather is and he can’t see the shadow

left of the story I believe and unbelieve

in because in the one I currently

live in, I don’t think I can find any

familiar faces in the heavens or the

sky that this side of earth still argues for

Cailey Tin is a southeast Asian-based teen creative. A vivacious reader and spirited writer, she is a critical writing manager and spoken word co-host at Incandescent Review; a columnist for Paper Crane Journal, Spiritus Mundi, and Incognito Press, among others. When not editing poetry for the borderline or Sophon Lit, she’s (imagining) chipping away at pieces—some published or forthcoming in Eunoia Review, Ice Lolly Review, Sage Cigarettes, and elsewhere. When not busy with schoolwork, it’s with school, piano, or exercising because she has scoliosis.