My Mother's Laughter, by Chris van Wyk

Quickly ouma wrapped me in a blanket as cold as the flag of a sad country, took me away to my mother whose tears by now were warmer, had more salt than the dead child, brother, grandchild.

Along the rough road cobbled with the dirges of beer cans, tremulous with stones and filled with more people than children born to the world that day, my grandmother walked, and for her the road grew shorter. For me , staring over her shoulder, it grew longer and longer.