The spring lilies bloom early amidst an artist’s palette of litter.

Dumping freckles the dunes. A pregnant hound sniffs for food

before nestling beneath a tattered shopping bag. Corrugated sheets

make for bad walls along the beachfront. But what can the rust

eat away that hasn’t already been effaced? I’m holding on to the

last dregs of winter, praying it will carry me through July. Summer’s

become a consequence we’re still learning to tolerate, like love

stories like mine. I watch the vlei evaporate up into a sky of

telephone wires and hills birthed from waste. How even the earth

isn’t a stranger to scabbing over the parts of us we’re told to hide.

My mother tells me I have to make something of my life. Guess I’m

at the age where I should have figured things out by now. She insists

that there was something here once, but I’m too young to tell you

what. The city puffs plumes of smoke into the air that blend right

in with the clouds. I can’t breathe when we stop at the red light,

right next to a child reaching out an empty McDonald’s cup to the

traffic. Don’t look away like I have. To advertisements peeling ripe

off buildings that will outlive me. Has everything always been this

small? How even Table Mountain can be carried away by the elements.

Subsumed by the clouds like a floating castle or a wayward son.

Disappearing without ever truly leaving. I always wonder what it’ll be

that I leave behind when the time comes, or when I walk into it like an

oncoming train. I scry the lines on my palms for a clue. There was something

here once, something to hold onto. I just can’t seem to recall what.