Collide
Resting Sundays in October and the sun does not speak
Rusting spring waters weaving the tide
And the melody teaches dance like music
What a confusion it is that we are taught how to collide in water
Fresh bone and teeth, the masses vomiting them out like litter
The sound of troubled water beaten, tortured waves and hands that spill ink,
Crescent lips that hung over a mouth full and a cracking moon seduced by the sands of time
In October, Autumn stung onto bodies,
Carefully sitting voices that mouth words to the sky
Love was honey, a ruling hand sinking with fingers dipped in milk under a timeless sky
It was not the water that taught us how to make love
It was the sun and sea twisting in a city on fire
In spring time, Sundays got up and left, settling like conscious sand
and always sinking their eyes delicate waiting for the sun and sea to collide.
Brown sugar
At the meeting of my thighs there is a river, where men fear they have to drink from and pour out of, where they lose their breaths without senses.
There is an ocean where leaves are in water and bones swim, where the tide runs to catch the wave in fear of the water.
There is melanin built in between and everything is sugar and salty.
Londeka Mdluli is a South African born writer who is of dual nationality. Although she was born in South Africa, she does not shy away from her Zimbabwean heritage. Mdluli is currently a student at the University of Western Cape in Cape Town, South Africa, majoring in Library information science. Mdluli began writing at age 9 after falling in love with rhetoric. She has since written many of her pieces based on what she finds most charming, water.