Written Too Straight

Society expected perfection from Sandra. But is perfection perfect?

📚✔️❌❓

Ms. Sandra Lee always arrived in class five minutes before her English lesson was to begin. There was no reason for this day to be any different.

The classroom had already risen before she stepped in. The lights were already on, and her students, quiet and standing, ready to greet.

But their morning salutation was not for her.

She’d always had a problem writing in a straight line on a ledger-less chalkboard.

But her name was on it this day.

She already knew the kids – there was no need for it.

It was in a line – written by someone else.

Too straight.

📚✔️❌❓

The students offered their polite greeting – almost too polite.

Their grace, too well-crafted.

Responses – too normal.

Sandra observed the teacher – an uncanny replica of herself, doling out marked homework and instructions.

The students, responding for once without any quiet rebellion.

They had finally accepted her for who she was.

But this was not her. Their politeness to this new her – her own erasure.

📚✔️❌❓

The formulae offered by Sandra’s replacement – herself – were doubtless.

Efficient. Perfect.

The students accepted the model solutions she offered without a single raised hand in protest.

No digression. No lingering questions.

The teaching was excellent, but without an ounce of warmth.

📚✔️❌❓

Then, the letter on her desk.

Thanking her for her service.

The parents were happy with Sandra’s replacement – she taught in the way the students recognized.

There was improvement. Formulae were clocked correctly, according to the letter. She had taught well, it said.

Just not good enough for – herself.

📚✔️❌❓

Sandra cleared her desk, putting her books and now needless worksheets in a box.

She carried it past the classroom and looked in at herself, finally explaining the formulae without a single missed equation.

But as she passed the classroom window, the replacement – her perfect upgrade – asked a question.

Then wrote the wrong sum on the board.

And vanished at the sound of the bell.

📚✔️❌❓

The students with half the needed formulae.

📚✔️❌❓

Original microfiction by Michelle Liew Tsui-Lin. AI tags are coincidental.

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What We Preserved

Mercy cannot be framed as irresponsibility.

📄 ✂️ 🕳️

The ritual started because our devotion wasn’t focused – we believed that we could love many at once.

We knew that love in this form was – questionable.

So we confessed – kept translating our romantic transgressions against each other week after week. Our souls attained a feathery lightness after each confession – or so we thought.

It mattered that we were to write down every act of betrayal. The absolution of that was non-negotiable. With ultimate precision, we wrote down each whispered betrayal, each act of dishonesty.

The ritual didn’t concur with logical reasoning. Trust should have denied his presence. Marriage should have become paper for burning.

Each backhanded alliance.

Each note was absolved – forgiveness was a forgone conclusion, a must.

Our souls felt lighter than before the ritual, nearly weightless. And the notes kept piling – Everest was ashamed.

More than we ever were.

We adhered to the ritual, day after day, month after month.

Year after year.

It never hurt while it happened.

The marriage lingered, open.

We jotted down confessions on arbitrary pieces of paper and ripped them apart, without a second thought.

Maintaining alliances – some straightforward, most not. Absolution, with the ripping of each note, eased each one.

Eased our souls. They became feathery light.

But as the weight of Transgression left us, the toll of others stayed.

Dismissal. Disvalue.

Disfavor.

The ritual had been performed many times before, in different ways.

Confessions just as soul-lightening, and unhinging.

Apologies that came too quickly, soothed for too short a time, and released without meaning or payment.

Children who bore the weight of meaningless absolution – sightless and unheard. Familial relationships formed without familiarity.

Alliances borne out of necessity and distrust.

Recorded, almost too meticulously, in journals, photos and damning letters, decades earlier.

Love had absolved souls that lightened. But stayed.

They each recognised their handwriting, formed at earlier times. Devotion had predecessors, malformed.

It was not our ritual to perform. But confessions without meaning were made.

And souls floated. No anchor.

Drifting ceaselessly, eternally, without respite or affirmation.

Time healed wounds, with their sting continuing to smart and pierce.

The ritual continued. The confessions were stark reminders, laid in black and white, in journals.

Consuming the souls of those who truly loved, attentively and sincerely.

The confessions preserved the relationship – one that remained, in different parts, scattered, yet together.

There was no resistance towards it – it continued, preserving souls with festering wounds.

Knowing resolved – making incomplete, irresolute forms.

They were unclear- the ritual was the only responsibility.

Love did not release. It perpetuated.

A neglected child.

The ritual – and the abject, yet trite confessions – continued. Both partners stayed. Souls obedient, but fractured.

Damaged – yet stable.

The confessions did what they had to do – leaving stable destruction in their wake.

What we have doesn’t need us whole – it needs us there.

We survived the absence and the harsh truths, with the cost of nothing following.

The ritual of shallow confession is pending – our son has married.

The young lady – undamaged, naive, unprotected.

Our elder daughter, too, has married, knowing full well the ritual and its truths.

The young man – equally innocent, faithful, and steady.

Unguarded.

Unaware of the costs of love, the ritual, and its power.

May they never need one.

May they never require truths without notice, recognition, or power.

May they never need confessions without spirit.

May they never need confessions at all.

But the ritual waits -silent.

Sentient, ready to hold.

📄 ✂️ 🕳️

Original story by Michelle Liew Tsui-Lin. AI tags are coincidental.

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Those Who Stay So Others Do Not Sink

This Wetlands Day, we offer a little gratitude for a place we seldom want to visit purposefully because of the inherent mud and mess.

But it’s an indispensable ecosystem that sustains when unnoticed.

So today, we thank those among us who do – without being seen.

🌾💦🤍

Land

Soaked soil

Humble and unseen

Soaks in morning mist

Quiet

🌱🌫️🦜

Leaves

Simple sprouts

Bird pecks grass

Its chirping whispers his

Thanks.

🌿🪶💧

Original poem by Michelle Liew Tsui-Lin. AI tags are coincidental.

Softened

We mark Martyr’s Day today – for Mahatma Ghandi, and all who walked selflessly with others who needed them.

For strength that refused applause.

🕊️🌿

He stands

In the midst of –

Lifting wreaths

And muted bows

🕊️🌿

He walked

With us

In the same breath

On the same route

🕊️🌿

For life

Softened

Under watch

For the Soul

🕊️🌿

That saw.

That lauded not.

That stopped.

And evaded

The light.

🕊️🌿

Original poem by Michelle Liew Tsui-Lin. AI tags are coincidental.

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A Carnation’s Bequest

Some realisations come too late.

🌸📜🕯️

Louisa Lum’s birthday began like any other. Gifts given, but drew a blank. A cake with so many candles, it frightened her.

And of course, flowers. Roses that dulled the midlifer’s spirit with their blush.

Then, there was the pink carnation.

A flower meant to charm. Its coy pink petals enwrapped. To make her heart a little less hard.

Tradition doing its quiet work.

The flower was ordinary. Nothing about it was intimidating, at first glance.

Then, while cleaning its vase, her fingers brushed against a thorn along its stem.

It pricked. She backed away from the vase, and knocked into a chest of drawers behind her.

They sprung open to reveal a stack of letters.

Her father. Someone else – she would rather not have read about.

It was truth, mis-timed. Cruel honesty.

Nothing broke – it wore down. There was a palpable distance between them, even while he was on his deathbed.

And the silence created something new.

The smell of the pink carnation’s petals lifted her nostrils, just as he passed.

And the truth hammered her heart with rusted nails. There had been clarity – but it hadn’t mattered one bit.

Damage done by a carnation’s accuracy, shoving her into a drawer just then.

Irreparable.

The pink flower wilted, leaving nothing in its wake –

Just a stack of letters, that should not have been read.

🌸📜🕯️

Original story for National Carnation Day by Michelle Liew Tsui-Lin. AI tags are coincidental.

Original poem by Michelle Liew Tsui-Lin. AI tags are coincidental.

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Standing Before the Glass

It’s Lewis Caroll’s birthday today, so it’s the perfect day to relish in a little wonder.

With a little help from Alice and the gang.

Alice wore blue and white. Not just white. She learned to appreciate wonder…past childhood.

Adulthood, gained. Innocence, intact.

🪞🎩🐱

She stands

Imbibing wonder

Silent, pensive

In its presence

Plainly calm.

🪞🎩🐱

He dances in

A hat with quick words

Scuttles around the garden,

Greets her,

Falls, and rises.

🪞🎩🐱

The mirror shows

An image

For the self

To decide.

🪞🎩🐱

Then a half-smile

Borne of adulthood

Doesn’t vanish

But stretches with age.

🪞🎩🐱

She stands

Accepting wonder

Silent, with a

Stoic smile

Of age

That knows.

🪞🎩🐱

Original poem by Michelle Liew Tsui-Lin. AI tags are coincidental.

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The Silver Locket

For those who must be remembered.

🕯️🤍🕊️

The locket. A small, plain heart framed by a nondescript,unpolished rim. The tarnished silver had dulled to the point of almost-disappearance; it was still part of Raine’s psyche.

It had belonged to Raine’s grandmother, and her grandmother’s mother. The wear and tear of decades of family misgivings had relegated it to a locked drawer.

But it had been once worn, and loved.

The unsterling silver had accompanied grandma through months of waiting for grandpa, who never came home after visiting Aunt Lily. It had borne months of freezing darkness and obscure shadows for the family.

Undiscarded, it remained.

The ladies – great-grandma, grandma, and mum, had polished the silver pendant till its gleam radiated as much as the sunlight streaming through the window. They held it dear, refusing to discard it even when the children, kudos for their piety, offered to purchase another lined with gold and pearls.

Decades passed – the locket stayed in the family, case intact.

Mum kept it in her jewellery box- for Raine to keep.

Recall.

To look after and guard, as she should.

Like all things that should be remembered, it remains.

🕯️🤍🕊️

Original microfiction for International Holocaust Remembrance Day by Michelle Liew Tsui-Lin. AI tags are coincidental.

Original poem by Michelle Liew Tsui-Lin. AI tags are coincidental.

If you like this story, do join me on Patreon! Buy this blog a coffee — it keeps the words flowing and the lights Your kind donation via Paypal would be greatly appreciated!

What Remains

Today marks the International Day of Clean Energy – a day not just about energy policies or fossil fuels, but power that LASTS.

That doesn’t deplete. That doesn’t scorch.

About how power systems (literal and otherwise), should be designed to last beyond their tenure.

Power that remains saffolds, not harms.

🌱💡🕊️

Power

Responsibility that lingers

Way beyond its tenure

Does not speak

Just seems.

🌱💡🕊️

Refreshed

No fodder

Does not scorch the ground

It walks

Safe space.

🌱💡🕊️

The lamp still glows

When dawn breaks

The heat does not scorch –

just warms.

🌱💡🕊️

Roaring flames soften

The brightness lowers.

True power resides,

Not lives.

🌱💡🕊️

Power

Scaffolds with its strength

Stays without drain

Or harm.

🌱💡🕊️

Lasts.

🌱💡🕊️

Original poem by Michelle Liew Tsui-Lin. AI tags are coincidental.

If you like this story, do join me on Patreon! Buy this blog a coffee — it keeps the words flowing and the lights Your kind donation via Paypal would be greatly appreciated!

What Was Not Said at the Table

We are approaching another round of celebrations – the Lunar New Year hides (or perhaps peeks) around the corner.

Festive occasions and dinners can become a source of discomfort because of the things we daren’t announce.

Some failures are carried politely – or not so.

🧨😉🧧

He opened the door to his parents’ home, inhaling a cautiously drawn breath. The clothes were-different. Costlier than before. His hair, neatly combed, bore successful Brylcream slicks.

His family noticed the Armanis first. “Wah. Changed job ah? Better pay?”

“So handsome.”

Everything about him spoke – progress. Except his now quiet demeanor. But there were too many labels to notice.

The celebration started the way it usually did. The family collected in a gleeful group around the table for the customary Lunar New Year Lo Hei – the tossing of the raw fish salad.For renewal.

Prosperity. Customary greetings of “ma dao cheng gong” (the horse heralds prosperity) and “xin xiang shi cheng” (may your dreams come true) resounded like speeches from an upturned loudspeaker. Everyone spoke of safe things. The typical roundabouts. Crafted politeness.

The meal lapsed into stoic Chinese silence, broken only by “Ah ma, chi yi dian yu(Gran, eat some fish).”They gaps were there for him to fill with disclosure and secrets.

One sentence could have changed their perception.

His life.

His silence never lifted.

His father glanced cursorily at him. He raised an eyebrow, scooped noodles onto his plate, and nodded.

The rest of the family paused briefly between mouthfuls of yusheng and noodles. His sister kept her head down. Her eyes became part of her bowl.

None spoke. They kept the same rigid silence, not letting him sit with what he refused to say.

That uneasy quietness hovered in the room, looming.

🧨😉🧧

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How Not to Summon What Waits

Peace does not arrive when called. It remains when allowed.

🕊️ 🕊️ 🕊️

Stop.

Set aside the frantic buzz of bees.

Sit in the stillness.

Let it come of its volition

Not by the force

Of your shove.

🕊️ 🕊️ 🕊️

Allow stoic

Silence

And calm.

Shun

Unwanted frenzy

Of Chaos.

The fire

Of Urgency.

🕊️ 🕊️ 🕊️

Rushing

the result

Shuts the door

to its still form.

Stop swinging

The door open

To see if it’s there.

Or banging it

With force.

She is reticent.

Blushes easily

And will turn quietly

Away.

🕊️ 🕊️ 🕊️

Peace will come

Donning the robe

Of silence

And stillness

If she will.

Open the door

If she arrives

Or wait

If she does not

Because

She would already

Be within.

🕊️ 🕊️ 🕊️

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