We gathered where the highway ends and the township begins,
& watched the crowds pull down shutters heavy with the dust of Hillbrow,
& it looked like smoke, or the charred iron of a country locking its gates.
My grandmother used to say that a continent is a single piece of cloth,
woven to hold the warmth of children so they do not freeze in the wilderness,
& yet I have watched three neighbors pack their lives into cardboard boxes & run before dawn.
What do we do with the blood that remembers the shared struggle,
the blood that sits quietly in the dark of a room in Alexandra,
listening to Afrobeats & whispering so the street does not recognize the accent?
I am sitting beneath a corrugated roof where the winter light drops like cold brass,
& I am counting the days left before the passing of an unwritten deadline.
We thought the border was a line we could cross to build a life,
but it was only an endless wall, swallowing our names,
leaving us with the bitter ash of burning stalls between our teeth,
& a fear that grows louder than the welcome we were promised.

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Marco Bianchetti on Unsplash