He starts with the easy pieces~
the corners, the edges, the parts of life
that stay where they’re put.
But the sky refuses to behave.
Its fragments lift from the table,
hovering above his hands
like small constellations
waiting for him to remember
where they once belonged.
He doesn’t look startled anymore.
Some puzzles do that~
they rise when you’ve asked too much of gravity,
when the unfinished part of your life
decides it’s tired of lying flat.
He reaches for a star-shaped piece,
but it drifts upward,
as if the cosmos has opinions
about how he should finish himself.
He laughs under his breath,
the way someone laughs
when they’re almost ready
to admit the truth.
The truth is this:
he’s not assembling a picture.
He’s assembling a question.
Every floating shard of sky
is a reminder that the universe
isn’t something you complete~
it’s something you join
one piece at a time.
The earth shakes, mimicking my weary bones,
And the ground is wet with tears left behind.
The cage of whiteness, locked tightly inside,
Upholds the heavy weight of every day's design.
Secrets and memories are ghosts we keep,
Bound tightly within the walls of the chest—
Forgiven, forgotten, or just cast aside,
The architecture of a heart aching for rest.
My steps falter on the unpaved ground,
Stumbling under the weight of a calcified spine.
Yet all this physical aching scarcely compares
To the quiet, structural cage of skeletal frame—
That has, until today,
Only answered to the marrow of your name.
By: Khomotso Makitla
Day one was the first time.
Meeting the world, at large.
Differences and dependents in abundance.
Breaking out of your shell, was better than walking out.
There's was a lesson to learn on how you shell out.
Tortoise shell protects and kill, once the script is flipped.
You struggle to move, suffocating from within.
Crocodile tears doesn't help, but curls you from the truth.
Moved by eternal grief for longing, and foreshadowing.
Like a paper kite that struggles to float, but sinks
You could feel the weight, weighing, all the air dense.
For a second you feel like voicing out, but all that suffocating has boxed you in.
And like a slave you're caged in, and all your fears comes to life.
Like the sunshine, the beacon
I built a small cathedral
out of the hours no one saw.
Not of stone,
but of the quiet ache
that gathers when a person learns
to live with their own echo.
Inside it,
the light behaves differently.
It bends around old memories,
touches the soft edges
of the things I never said,
and warms them
as if forgiveness were a sunrise
slowly remembering how to rise.
Some days,
I am only a doorway
waiting to be opened.
Other days,
I am the whole sky
trying to hold itself together
while the wind insists
on teaching me how to let go.
But tonight,
I am simply human
a pulse,
a breath,
a small lantern of hope
carried through the dark
by hands that have learned
the art of not giving up.
And if you pass me
on one of your quieter evenings,
you might see it
that faint shimmer
of someone rebuilding themselves
not loudly,
not perfectly,
but honestly.
A fractured glass, a
shattered trust,
Our sacred vows reduced to
dust.
You wore her scent upon your
skin,
And smiled as if it weren't a
sin.
I found the messages you
hid,
The cold, deliberate things
you did.
While I was building up our
home,
You left me standing there
alone.
The worse part isn't where
you slept,
Or all the dirty secrets kept.
It's how you looked me in the
eye,
And made me feel insane to
cry.
You do not have to carry the whole sky.
The clouds will move without your permission.
The wind will blow whether you hold your breath or breathe.
Your mind is not a battleground to be won.
It is an ocean.
The storms on the surface do not change the deep water.
Sit quietly with the noise.
Let the thoughts pass like cars on a distant dual carriageway.
You are not the traffic.
You are the space through which it moves.
Forgive the parts of you that are tired.
Honour the pieces that are still trying.
You are a whole world, evolving in the dark,
Waiting for your own sun to rise.
On mornings stitched with quiet light,
he stood before the day took shape—
not loud, not crowned with ceremony,
but steady as a door that doesn’t break.
His hands knew maps no one had drawn,
the routes through doubt, through hunger, through fear,
he built a language out of small acts—
“I'm here,” he said, by being here.
A father is not only thunder,
not only walls against the storm,
but also rain that feeds the garden,
a patient heart that helps us form.
In worn-out shoes and late-night sighs,
in lessons given without show,
in every “try again” he offers—
that’s where the deepest roots will grow.
He carries futures in his silence,
dreams he sets aside to raise
a child who may not see the cost
until much later in their days.
And still he gives, in ways unseen—
a compass set to what is right,
a quiet faith that we will find
our own true path, our own good light.
So here’s to him, and those like him,
who shape the world with unseen art—
for every life he’s helped to steady
is proof of fatherhood’s true heart.
we keep our bodies in layers,
like a river keeps its bed.
this surface , this inked architecture,
is but a trellis
for a deeper growth.
I am watching the transparent version of you
hover, like a cloud in a glass house.
you bend , the light showing
the phantom trace of your spine,
the clear, unhurried arc of your neck.
you look back at yourself--
the other you,
the one with skin,
etched with patterns and circles,
a map of all that has been held.
is this how you decide which face to wear?
one of a girl,
another of an ancient man,
a memory ghost waiting to be fed.
at the periphery,
your hands drift like smoke,
almost meeting.
one with fingerprints and geometric lines,
and one that is just a gesture.
a humming-bird on a single thread-
an impossible physics--
is being fed or led,
and it does not know the difference.
we exist between this solid,
pattern-matched bone
and the desire to be nothing but the light
that passes through.
the body is the first mask,
and the first mirror.
Kids should be city architects.
What a lovely world it would be ~
Every street would be magical !
Wordku: 5-7-5 words
AP: Honorable Mention 2026
It arrives not as a slow dawn, but a fracture—
A sudden, violent tearing of the gray,
Where neurotransmitters leap in manufactured rapture,
And logic bends to the blinding light of day.
It is a temporary kingdom built on air,
A frantic, soaring, breathless, desperate high,
Ignoring the foundation of despair,
To watch the mundane world dwindle and die.
The heart becomes a drum with an accelerated beat,
Distorting time until the seconds, stretch and bend,
A breathless rush, a sweet and sharp deceit,
That promises a joy without an end.
It is the apex where the self dissolves,
A chemical, ethereal, phantom grace,
Where gravity loses its hold, and ego solves,
Into a momentary, breathless, liminal space.
But at its peak, the architecture starts to lean,
For all ascension mandates a return,
The higher the flight, the deeper the machine
Must crash when the bright, burning engines turn.
Euphoria is a loan, a borrowed debt,
A fleeting, dazzling, brilliant, stolen breath,
That leaves the trembling, wakeful mind to fret,
In the quiet, cold, inevitable aftermath of death.
We come from different places
carrying different stories
but the same quiet wish sits in all of us
to live without fear
to speak without restraint
to exist without being diminished.
Human rights aren’t medals to be awarded
or prizes to be earned
they are the simple birthright of every person
a baseline for dignity
a foundation for freedom
a reminder that no life is worth less than another.
Peace doesn’t appear fully formed
it’s built slowly
in conversations that refuse cruelty
in laws that protect the vulnerable
in moments where we choose empathy
over the easy path of anger.
When no one is silenced
when no one is cast aside
when justice is more than a slogan
and compassion isn’t treated as weakness
peace begins to take root.
And in that rooting
in that steady growing
we inch closer to a world
where people can breathe openly
stand confidently
and know they belong.
Tuesday morning,
Steam rises from a cup,
catches light,
becomes architecture
for three seconds.
The cat's shadow
crosses the wall
a sundial no one reads.
A million thoughts converge:
the spoon's small clink,
the way light refuses to stay still,
the persistent green of a single leaf.
This, too, is scripture.
Every second,
a poem with depth
we forget to read.
The barriers to my affection
Are iron gates
With spikes that impale anyone
Who dares to perch too long
Montreal is my favourite city ~ a mix of old and new.
I love its architecture which graces it with style and unique character.
It's got more than its share of cathedrals, pubs and restaurants.
It boasts a vibrant mingling of local and exotic culture.
Well known to be the hub of exquisite cuisine and fine dining.
Montreal gathers artists into a most vivacious symbiotic community.
Best of all ~ summertime offers its kaleidoscope of musical festivals.
So make a point of visiting this city that is big on charm !
Let Montreal lure you, captivate you and seduce you ~
AP: 2nd place 2025
Sunlight finds a gap
between two bickering stones—
moss builds a cathedral.
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