Stone Poem - June 2025

No one is going to read this, which is:

A) a relief

B) a shame

C) a completely normal part of being a writer, like duh what do you expect little prince

D) permission to write whatever the fuck I feel like

E) all of the above

I fall asleep in class. 

I fall asleep at shul. 

I fall asleep at restaurants. 

I fall asleep in cars. 

I fall asleep at plays, operas, museums, lectures.

I fall asleep in the waiting room outside the ICU. 

I fall asleep while standing up during a rained out detention. 

I fall sleep while reading. 

I fall asleep after a fight. 

I fall asleep at the pre drinks. 

I fall asleep in the library. 

I fall asleep holding onto your leg while you work on your essay.

We take turns pulling at the edge of the window frame but we cannot get it to open. Even Mathiba can only get it to squeak an inch back an inch forward until he lets go and it judders kwangerangerangerang two window frames overlapping until they become one again. We take turns throwing our shoes at the glass. We take turns hitting snails into the wall outside the storeroom with my uncle’s squash racket. We take turns holding the hosepipe to wash away the black stains left behind. We take turns hitting each other on the arm during the long bus ride to go play sports against a different, but in many ways very similar, high school in KZN. We take turns and that turns the violence into a game. The game has rules and the rules make it funny and the rules make it fair, and playing the game makes you part of a group and the group makes you feel like someone more real than you were before you started playing the game. 

I shoot zombies, hoard resources, craft shivs, toggle with the brightness. I run away from zombies, explore abandoned buildings, swap the brick that I’m carrying for a metal pipe I find on the ground. I admire the care put into the light falling through trees and the storm brewing in the distance that the level seems to be leading me towards.My phone buzzes but I ignore it. My thumbs ache but I ignore them too. The dogs lie on their beds in front of the couch, trying to sleep through the squishy sounds of virtual violence. The curtains are imperfectly closed. A strip of light dissects the room but I ignore the beautiful spring day happening outside. It’s been a hard week. It’s been one year to the day. I crouch in a cupboard and rest my hands.

I am so very cold.

Verily cold. 

Colder, even, than that. 

Shit man. No, man. This weather is fucked, hey. 

There’s frost on the grass. The residents of the top floors of Ponte are expecting snowfall. 

It hurts to type.

It hurts to touch. 

I can’t stop shaking. 

Mommy, please come home. 

At the bottom of the drive, underneath a mess of dead dry plants, we find a metal trap door sunk into the ground. We dig around the edges and pry it open. Metal rungs built into mottled walls form a ladder leading down into a dark wet room that smells of soil. We climb down one by one, until we’re all in there together. We giggle and push each other. We climb back up one by one and look down into the hole, proud of ourselves but unsure exactly what to make of our discovery. We take turns being closed in the dark. Except for Isabelle, who refuses to go down there by herself.  We speak about turning it into a secret club house, where we could stash all of our secret stuff. We don’t yet have any secret stuff to stash, but maybe if we get the secret clubhouse first, the secret stuff will arrive in its own time.

Somewhere in the city someone is wearing those chunky grey Pumas I bought when I thought I was a sneaker head.

Fiona comes out into her garden where we have been playing spayithu ‘mpama for hours. She tells me my parents called and I have to go to the hospital to see Alice. I ask if I can keep playing for a little bit longer and the way Fiona says no is scary because she sounds scared and she’s never scared. Lukeandthem go quiet, stop playing. I go inside with Fiona to gather my things.  I pull socks over my dirty feet and hear the slap of a slightly deflated ball hitting the wall. Clement shouts no no no, no guys, no guys, that didn’t count and the others respond with the hungry collective laughter of a predator.  I sit in the backseat of Fiona’s car and she drives me to the hospital. The AC cools the sweat on my body and I start to shiver. My confidence that nothing really-truly-really-awfully-really-irreversibly bad could ever happen is standing on stage under a bright light, checking its notes, squinting out into the amorphous audience, unsure how to respond to this latest question. 

Father’s Joseph’s eyes won’t stop watering during the service. A great big hand appears on the screen at the front of the church as someone places the next verse onto the overhead projector. The Catholic kids in our row stand up and go to receive communion. Having recently learned that I am not Catholic, I stay in my seat with the other non-believing losers. The prefect moves on to the next row, more kids stand up. They line up at the front of the church, waiting for their turn to kneel on the red cushions spaced out on the alter. They eat the little biscuit. They sip the wine. They cross themselves, stand, and line up at the back of the church to confess. What’s it like in that little box? 

I watch the confessors on their way back to our row, looking for something in their faces that says oh ja wow that confession really hit the spot. But I don’t know what I’m looking for. 

I can’t believe how you abandoned me this afternoon, she says to Olive as she passes her on the stairs. Olive stops, watches Cingashe on her way up the steps, says excuse me what, and the fight starts. At first, the rest of us on the stairs think it’s funny, but very quickly it becomes awkward, and then a little bit scary. Kevin tries to calm things down but both Olive and Cingashe ignore him. Het gets up to find more wine.In fact, how dare you, Olive says, and shit really kicks off. Later, I go looking around the party for Cingashe, and I find her crying in Bella and Bryn’s room. She’s says, I always do this, I ruin everything in my life. I hug her, try to convince her that nothing is ruined.She holds on to me. She shakes. I rub her back and think oh man what has the world done to you. I think wow look at me consoling someone I’m such a good friend hey. I think ugh what a shitty thing to think. I think how long should I keep rubbing her back before it becomes weird?

I think how many more cigarettes can I bum from Gareth before it becomes annoying? 

Nelson Mandela’s grandson is in my grade. 

Nelson Mandela’s grandson is in my class. 

Nelson Mandela’s grandson is throwing up the chicken pie we shared for lunch. 

Nelson Mandela’s grandson is giving a presentation on the life cycle of a caterpillar. 

Nelson Mandela’s grandson’s older brother (who, it turns out, is also Nelson Mandela’s grandson) is practising wrestling moves on us in his awesome teenage bedroom.

Nelson Mandela’s grandson is the main pirate in the school’s pirate play. 

Nelson Mandela’s grandson is called out of class in the middle of the day and when he returns he has David Beckham’s signature on the yellow part of his yellow and blue tracksuit top. 

Faster, faster, faster - but with three dogs in the back and the pod on the roof our sweet little Jimny can’t go much faster on these uphill parts. We pass by Tom’s Place somewhere near Bloemfontein. 

There are niche petrol brands in the Karoo with beguiling colour palettes. I step out of the car and stretch out my back. I breathe in deep. The petrol smell here is crisper than the petrol smell we get in Joburg.

I pace around the house as if I’m looking for something. One of the dogs follows me from room to room, confused. I hold the phone to my cheek and try to smooth out the panic in my chest. I say it’ll be so nice, trust me! I walk into the bathroom, collecting the empty ritalin blister packs I’ve left scattered around the sink. I say just let me come pick you up, and, and you don’t even have to swim you can just lie on the grass in the sun and, and we can photosynthesise together. The whole thing will take forty minutes max. I promise. She says that sounds nice, she says that sounds like exactly what she needs.  But ultimately, inevitably, she says no. She says she needs to work. She says just needs to get her work done, and then everything will be better. She says if she can get enough work done then she can go to sleep and if she can go to sleep everything will be better when she wakes up. Her logic is impervious to anything I can come up with.  She ends the call. I keep pacing around the house.

As we pull up to a red light Kyle’s driver/bodyguard swears at a taxi driver. He uses the K word, something I’ve never heard said aloud except in some of the plays at the Market Theatre that my parents have taken me to. He shows me the gun in the glove compartment. He drives really fucking fast, and Kyle’s laughter tells me that this is supposed to be fun but it’s mostly just scary. The car smells like cherries in a stuffy, suffocating kind of way. He drives us to Bedfordview so we can practise our Torah portions with the rabbi’s wife. On the way back to Kyle’s house he tells us that he was part of 50 Cent’s security team when he came to perform at the Coca-Cola Dome. I make a sound like wow and look out the window.

P and I follow Kevin through the crowded streets of Korea Town. I try to savour the experience of smoking a cigarette after midnight in New York while rushing to catch the next train back uptown.

The extra lesson is over. Rambo makes me watch a pirated version of ‘The Ugly Truth’ on his portable DVD player while we wait to leave for the Friday evening soccer game. He walks in and out of his classroom, making photocopies, getting a cup of coffee.  I hear him talking to another teacher in the hallway. They laugh at something he says and he laughs back even louder. Gerard Butler and Katherine Heigel are shooting a segment about hot air balloons. Someone leaves the theatre to go to the bathroom and their blurry silhouette blocks out the screen for a few seconds.

Earlier this week I gave away the shoebox full of cloth masks. 

I hope that doesn’t jinx anything.