IR Short Stories

  I'm not rebellious. They are. I'm not terrible. They are. Excuses, excuses. I know it sounds like excuses for my umpteenth pardon. I know. If I could show you the depth of my mind, you would find me curled in a corner, bound like a prisoner in my own head. I have no control. I love you, but they prefer the opposite. Excuses, excuses. I know. Help me. I tried therapy. Fifty-one days of talking about my feelings only served to open wounds without healing them. Talking about feelings is not for everyone. It certainly isn't for me. I need a tow truck to pull me out of this mud. I'm sinking. I need to stop pacing. The carpet beneath my feet has a path worn into it now, a small oval prison circling the room, but if I stop moving, I will sink. I'll free-fall into the depths of my mind where I'm nothing. Where I lose every battle. Am I too gullible to believe whatever they say? Am I saying all these things about myself? No, it couldn't be. I couldn't hate...

Amu’s mornings had grown quiet, slow, and heavy with thought. Since she was fired from her waitressing position for speaking boldly against racism, she had been reeling , trying to figure out what came next. Amu was a trained journalist in a country where a degree didn’t guarantee work, and lately, the only path that made sense was politics, somewhere her voice might carry further than a blog post. So far, she knew one thing: she needed to stand for something important, something that could shift the trajectory of the country in a meaningful way. Her overworked mind had yet to figure out what that looked like, but she was determined to find it, even if it took everything. Sleepless, she rose at dawn and jogged toward the Union Buildings in Pretoria, Arcadia. She hadn’t anticipated that the most tragic thing she would see that morning would become the driving force of her political life. As she ran in silence, lost in thought, she noticed a woman sitting cross-legged on the ...