They cut the buds before dawn. That was how you knew it was spring – not with birdsong or the fresh scent of blossoms, but with the scrape of ladders against bark, the snap of branches, and the smell of petals being burned before they had the chance to bloom. By sunrise, the hills were speckled with bonfires. No one stopped to look. Not anymore. People kept their heads down and hurried about their business, stepping over...

The Conspiracy It wasn’t a meeting so much as a hostage situation. The room wasn’t a room. No walls. No floors. No ceiling. Just a place that shouldn’t exist, smelling faintly of cigarette smoke, candle wax, stale vodka and something metallic. The barrage of mismatched furniture was stolen from everywhere else – different eras and genres – a Victorian chaise, a war table with scorch marks, a flickering streetlamp, a couch...

I accidentally (don’t ask) stumbled into politics last year. And while I keep pointing out to all of them that I am not a politician, merely an observer, some things became clear as time (and endless issues) passed. This is one thought I had recently: Sometimes scarcity isn’t always about what’s missing. It’s about what’s withheld. Not by accident, more like a scam. A rigged game dressed up as fate and labelled “the way t...

How many more must be taken before the weight crushes us? How many little bodies must be lowered into the ground before the earth refuses to take them? We are tired of candlelight vigils. Tired of flowers wilting on cold pavements. Tired of headlines that read like they’ve been copied and pasted from yesterday. Our sisters are bleeding. Our children are hiding in cupboards and under beds, praying the footsteps pass them b...

She doesn’t grow where she’s planted- but in soils they swore were barren, her roots splitting stone, pushing through cracks, drinking rain that once denied her. She doesn’t whisper her worth- her voice is the tide summoning storms, reshaping shores, washing away the footprints of those who tried to walk over her. Her beauty isn’t in the curve of a hip nor the tilt of a smile- it’s in the fire beneath her ribs: a slow-bur...

In a small Karoo town bruised by time and poverty, where dust settled into everything, rust crept into the bones of buildings and dreams had long since dried up, the days often blurred – each one a faded echo of the last. Except on Thursdays, when a certain young woman walked its cracked streets with quiet eyes and a steadiness that didn’t quite belong. Her name was Amina. Every week, she appeared – a solemn figure in wor...

I didn’t come to the beach to fall in love. I came because I was bored, burnt out, and vaguely dramatic about turning thirty. I’d quit my job three days earlier by replying “No” to an e-mail that said “Please confirm availability for Q3 onboarding.” I packed a backpack, found a cheap rental by the sea, and brought the three things I trust: my camera, my skateboard and my grandmother’s dented thermos. The first time I saw...

And now I close my eyes to dream of silent drums beating ‘neath the sea’s dark breast-- its heinous tempo shaping Norns’ decree. Begging only this, Do vassal’s whims hold no weight? And now I close my eyes to dream. Sky dark as a sceptre’s cloak above the pathless deep. The wind’s ghastly sweet melody like severed chords calling me hence. Pray, who shall banquet on my soul? And now I close my eyes to dream, clad in blood...

Dreams rise from the deep – dreams of forgotten treasure buried in hollows of shadow and silence, where the glint of gold calls out to the light like a dying star. Hope, delicate yet insistent, reaches with embroidered fingers to press against the drumbeat of my heart. I draw breath – not merely air, but awakening, slow, primal, and shattering in its release. A resurrection. A flickering vision. A single, dark eye widenin...

He showed up on a Monday, carrying a skateboard, a chipped thermos and a camera with no strap. Then, very seriously – as though we weren’t already standing on a sandpit of seagulls – he asked, “Where’s the beach?” I pointed over my shoulder at the waves shuffling up and down the shore like an indecisive waiter. “Just past the seaweed. If you reach your childhood memories, you’ve gone too far.” He blinked. “That’s oddly po...

The town of Hazzard was a quiet place, the kind where everyone knew everyone. Or thought they did. The kind of place where the wind whispered secrets through the endless cornfields and the river carried the weight of unspoken truths. A place surrounded by beauty that belied the darkness that seeped from its soil. For me, growing up in Hazard was like living under a microscope, every glance a silent judgement, every whispe...

They buried him on a day that dared to be beautiful. The sky was a tender blue. The sun showed up without apology, casting its light over everything like a blessing no one asked for. Birds sang. Somewhere, a child laughed. None of it touched her. She stood there, hands clenched around wilted stems, watching the earth open its mouth to take him. No breeze blew. No shadow shifted across her path. And yet she shivered. Becau...

I grew up being told what I was before I even knew who I was. "Coloured." Like that answers the question. Like that explains everything- and nothing- all at once. My people? We got history in our blood and displacement in our bones. We know how to live between things- between languages, between expectations, between the cracks of a country that still doesn’t know where to place us unless it’s behind something. I’ve been s...

Shadows press against my ribs. Aching, heavy as unanswered prayers, whispering the language of blame, a dialect of secrets and broken promises my soul cannot unhear. Even the air is a traitor, thick with ghosts of splintered vows. A room crowded with silence screams loudest in the absence of forgiveness. I held your words in trembling hands, cradling it as though it could bloom into a salve for the wounds you left. But wo...

As we close the book on 2024, I find myself in a moment of bittersweet reflection. It’s been a year that, in many ways, has tested my resolve and reshaped my priorities. We’ve been through a lot (you all know who you are)—together and apart. There have been moments that lit up our hearts and losses that darkened our days. This year has left empty spaces that I’ll always carry in my heart… to those I’ve lost, thank you for...