A LITERARY JOURNAL PUBLISHING STANDOUT TEEN WRITERS AGES 13-19
DON'T TRY TO BE BLACK ATLAS
by CARISSA CEASOR (United States)
Issue 2.3 December 2020
Shirk your sense of responsibility.
Leave your guilt at the door of progress.
Here's a rack inside, just hang it up.
You are not holding the world together.
You are not stopping the sky from crushing us.
The inevitable overcast of human fault
will only slip through your fingers, it is mist.
Walk with one hand on this cloud.
The hand that types your name where
X marks the spot on a petition.
The hand that saves and re-shares,
writes, but does not wipe tears.
Leave that to your other hand.
The one that makes yourself tea.
The one that turns on the TV
and changes the channel away from the news.
Let this other hand tend to our fallen.
Let it be, not our raised fist in the cloud,
but the open palm of empathy we cling to.
This is not a moment of you but a movement of us.
No more backs must be broken pulling the heavy good nearer,
if we all, millions, tug with just one hand.
Carissa Ceasor, age 15, is a writer, poet, and lover of fiction podcasts who thinks a lot about designing a game but probably won't. They've been all over and it shows in how they write about racism in its different forms, but also romance. For funzies.