When The Mannequin gets sad, she calls the lost children to her shop window. Carrying cardboard under their arms like teddy-bears, the lost children climb up onto their tippy-toes to reach the burglar bars. On empty stomachs, they slip The Mannequin the dreams they keep in discarded sweet wrappers. In exchange for their dreams, The Mannequin unbuckles her high-heels and throws them out the window onto the concrete where they land, a pile of bones. Sniffing glue out of Liqui Fruit juice boxes, the lost children stumble back out into the night, dreamless, in shoes they cannot walk in.
Starvation’s weekly planner
Yesterday, her wrists were as thin as serviette holders. Today, her skin is as thin as Rizla. Tomorrow, her spine will be as soft as a fishbone. On no particular day, her frame is carried off by the ants and their whispers.
Robyn Perros is a South African writer, researcher, and multimedia artist. She holds a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from Rhodes University where she is currently a PhD scholar and Teaching Assistant. Her work has been exhibited/published/presented in multiple spaces such as the KwaZulu Natal Society of the Arts (KZNSA), Open Plan Studio (Durban), Theotherroom (Durban), Nature is Louder Literary Project (Makhanda), Symposium for Artistic Research in Analog Photography (Helsinki 2022), Institutions & Death 2022 conference (University of Bath, UK), Mahala, Zigzag, Isele Magazine, and Ons Klyntji zine. She is currently a visiting scholar at the University of Connecticut. Her PhD research is looking at online death practices in South Africa. She lives in Makhanda. She can be found on Tumblr at robynperros.tumblr.com
the Decolonial Passage 