#vss365 Did you know that the Mediterranean meets the Med at the #Straits of Gibraltar? So the ashes I shed on the west coast of South Africa pass through the Pillars of Hercules to Aphrodite’s Isle, where you took your last breath on this earth. You’re making your way home.

#vss365 Down south, we never admit our winters are freezing. We dare not admit there’s such a season. We speak of cold snaps, cold fronts and our houses are igloos when we’re not in direct sunlight. Africa has us in her grip. But if there’s no winter, how can there be #spring?

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#vss365 The true grit of the city was soon upon us. Pilgrims crowded every alleyway. The stench of bodies was overbearing. I inhaled my own armpit to #stop from swooning atop Sal’s ambling gait. It’s customary to visit the Temple thrice a moon-year, and Pesach was the big kahuna.

#vss365 They were so inbred I’m surprised they didn’t all have six fingers & a harelip. Some of them did, but never made it into the official portraiture. As they hurtled towards their sticky end, they lost touch with the inevitability of karma. There had to be #someone to blame.

#vss365 The top hats swivelled to observe the new #speaker. It was the maestro himself, garbed in a fresh tuxedo, a waxen young woman on his arm, auburn curls escaping their entrapment, bowed lips smelling faintly of iodine. She hummed soft and low under her breath. His sister.

American Gothic. With a twist of Wanda.

#vss365 Melpomene stamps her boot. ‘Enough! Give us a solstice!’ Thalia hands me the tonic & the Muses go into a tight huddle. There is much hushed tsking & tutting.If I feign empty-headedness maybe I can figure out their intentions. Duplicity is a #small price to pay for access.

#vss365 I traced the voice to a concealed cave entrance, lifted the silken arras, and beheld one of the juiciest gems I’d ever laid eyes on. Her #skin was like a bowl of fresh cream, her hair was a riot of liquorice allsorts, her lips, ruby kolumia. She looked good enough to eat.

#vss365 I open my palms & present ashes of ektar, clinging to my pores like a burnt offering. ‘Good goddess, it’s burnt to a crisp,’ Cleo cries. ‘What are we to do with a handful of soot?’ ‘Make sketches?’ I say. ‘You could #scrape it off with a stigil and melt it into stili.’

#vss365 I don’t know who designed the corset, but it must have been a man. Who knew that a garment so uncomfortable would become the height of fashion for so long? Women appeared to welcome the opportunity to suffocate slowly in the #shape of an hourglass. A lung-captured ransom.

#vss365 She stood in the antique shop, wearing nothing more than a flimsy, filthy sarong. Spotted a pair of virulent velvet stockings and simply had to try them on. There was no need for her to #shed her kanga and expose herself to the shop assistant. Sheela ma gig. Baubo, even.

#vss365 The ring had been in the safe for over thirty years: a cracked diamond on a raised golden prong, salvaged from her parents’ toxic troth. On graduating her belated degree, she had it reset upon a simple rose gold band and pledged a secret Sologamy. Marriage to her #self

#vss365 A dawn song of early birds greeted my arrival as I rose from the #primordial waters, each with her own distinctive rhythm & tune. Crabs, frogs & mudskipper leapt about in the shallows. & there, on the other side of the swamp, waded the man of my dreams: Poseidon himself.

#vss365 Two years to the day & still the loss seems surreal. I see you in every cloud formation, scent you in each flower, hear you in the #sussurus of birdsong. Would that I could touch you one more time before the illusion of life after death drowns me in everlasting sorrow.

#vss365 Just as I was consoling myself with a tiptoe through my tulips, a hooded shadow padded into the #realm of my cell. ‘My Empress,’ I uttered, ‘to what do I owe the honour?’ ‘Shhh,’ she said, putting a slender finger to my lips. ‘Follow me. I am in want of female soothing.’

#vss365 On the barge above me, a drum the size of a holy ark started to sound out a slow, rowing rhythm. ‘One, taka taka tak, taka tak tak …’ The slaves raised their oars, #parallel to the water. ‘Two, taka taka tak, taka tak tak…’ They dipped in unison. ‘Zenobia, My Empress!’

#vss365 I remember coming to meet my sister at the airport in ‘19 one whole day early. One has to harken to these invisible #liminal spaces. I was practically born on an aeroplane. When we could sleep on the belly of the plane. And see the world through the eyes of a child.

#vss365 Two little sisters perched laughing on the crumbling slate wall. A man walked by & asked their mother, ‘Are these wee bairnes both your daughters?’ ‘Oh yes,’ said mother proudly. ‘But one is so fair & one is so dark. Are you sure your husband is their mutual #progenitor?’

#vss365 I grabbed the #gugru by the beitzim and held the sharpened date palm struts to his short and curlies, squeezing their ends together like a pair of giant chopsticks. I could unsex him on the spot if the spirit moved me, pulverise his petty power with one sure flick.