I tried to love (someone like) me & this is how it went
Cailey Tin
You said the most unpredictable, insulting thing to my face & I did what anyone would do if they adored you, I burst out laughing. Not the yeah-right- you-wannabe type of laugh, but real guffaws close to genuine. Genuine, I think. & I can tell that you’re not used to someone understanding
your jokes, your metaphorical riddles that sound weightless, but in fairness, the moment you care about someone, everything they say morphs into a solid. This is how I learned poets can be hard to love. Many things can’t carry the weight of words translated into concrete, especially things like exhaustion. I’m dead tired of reading poems, both yours & mine, about how words can burn; it’s ungrateful when they’ve supplied us with too much warmth & yet all we poets think about is how the heat rises, the heat falls, & subsequently, the heat
leaves us with a frosty death, while at the same time, we’re scorched to the bone. How can it do everything at once? It makes no sense, the way you take all that I am to you, splay it on paper like a journal
decorated with dead leaves, just a gust of wind & I’m sent whirling in the air, scattered like ashes of your affection. Words
are wind-driven, like hurricanes, but all I wanted was a gentle breeze. Once, when you realized that you overstepped past the shoreline, you traced apology on the sand, FORGIVE ME, DARLING. I WAS MERELY TAPPING THE WATERS.
I imagine you, after writing that, four feet away, attention now on a nearby sandcastle, another beautiful thing to contain in stanzas. To control your gusty emotions with an outlet I thought I could see through. I know your poems are personal, but because you love me, I thought I lived in them too. A grave mistake. I dug into your words too much, until the sand turned a different shade of brown, each figure of speech like torn-up pieces of a good bye letter.
I have a problem too. I never said my overthinking is your fault; I’m saying just don’t date poets. I get up to leave the beach, empty-handed on seashells when, as if on cue, you lunge at me from behind. Our embrace is soft & strangely, light. Like falling into a pile of pillows.
While an entangled mess, we watch the ocean fold & unfold beneath a raging sunset. & I realize, with both chill & warmth, that we poets wear ourselves out, but when the storm subsides, there is so much calm & beauty. The waters, like fire, are both parts exhausting & exhilarating
Fingertips smudged with ink, you lay down a picnic blanket on the sand, & once I’m close enough, you take out a sheet of paper & whisper in my ear, I wrote a poem for you. Rotate it to the
side. See that?
THE LINES LOOK LIKE WAVES.
issue four / panacea
Absolution in Absence
Cailey Tin
Whenever I wake from dreams, the dawn’s first light//echo//sensation I recall from it is conscience, but the feeling distorted. A memory sunbathing beneath an angry sky as it spreads out her hands, like a bird split open, as if to say, I know there are ruby tides emerging from my insides & dripping like food coloring into the lakes, staining the prettiest meadows, oozing in my back like ointment seeping back into the packet it came from. But look how much ground I’ve covered since the sickness started spreading, now it only travels with the speed of a coin trapped inside an ice cube. What a miracle! Disease, like a currency, purely breaks
free when the ice melts, so say whatever the fudge you want, but there’s nothing I can do about it; call me cold for flying off to some bitter desert. Call my heart made of ice for not taking you with me, where we could’ve voyaged from the lakes & meadows to a place with extreme flash floods together; so much fun, you said, being together, dancing in the rain! I wonder how you’d love cloudburst, torrential downpours rushing to fill in the hole of my ailing vessels, too hollow, like an empty pen holder, leaving a signature on every landform I’ve passed by with an inky, bright- cherry-type-of-scarlet puddle. It has a low viscosity as
fluid as a bird’s flight, each graceful swoop echo- ing in the crimson
spill, a duet of elements between air & blood. I wonder why, after the night’s temperature drop sucks up all the crisp brittle air, I still dream in this barren land without you & the first fragment//reverie//haunting I recollect from it after coming to is your dry mouth, dripping with licorice & something red, pressed against every wounded feather—yes, this is the part when the bird soars into the picture, pale & colorless, beak broken from apologizing. You once told me, your mind can forget but your body can’t finish remembering. How wise for someone who still believes in fairy tales & clings to the illusion of my speedy recovery, our swift reunion. We often think of how fast light travels,
& observing you, I can say the same with color. Your lips & cheeks are like reservoirs, the way they’re an artificial lake you tinted pink, & how its hue drained like lightning fast. Cosmetics washed away like a hopeful valley, overeager for harvests, then hit with a burst of change, & suddenly it’s undergoing a drought on time-lapse. I don’t blame you & your face. I’m sorry for the color fleeing from your cheeks as I winged off. I promise my reasons exceed beyond time & water shortages. You’re oblivious to how only below, below, below zero keeps my sickness from melting, from spreading like inky puddles, from further clotting. You don’t know enough about clotting, or rather, how the body remembers, but the mind numbs in memory. You haven’t seen me frost- bitten & tear-streaked, a statue beneath a tenebrous sky, shuddering with relief that
you’re not beside me. Because look around, who can forgive in this place
Cailey Tin, hailing from the Philippines, is a columnist, poetry editor, and/or podcast host for publications such as Incandescent Review, Paper Crane Journal, and Spiritus Mundi. She can be found (imagining) chipping away at pieces, whether it's in piano, journalism articles, or debate speeches. Notably, at 13, she received a Pushcart nomination and won recognition from Ice Lolly Review, Fairfield Scribes, and more. Follow her teenage endeavors//shenanigans on Instagram @itscaileynotkylie.