Go slow-ly next time
you are inside of me
I am fragile, a deer
of woven glass. Touch me
as you would plait
a child’s hair.
Your fingers are large.
My strings are thin.
And when I am wet,
like paper, I tear.
Nica Cornell is a 25-year-old South African writer and contributing editor for the Africa Matters Initiative. She has been published in The Times; Africa, the UK and Ireland: Writing Politics and Knowledge Production (in press); the South African Foreign Policy Review (in press), Botsotso and Aerial 2012. She has published on The Good Cemetery Guide, The Good Men Project, The Frantz Fanon Blog, Mobius: Journal of Social Change and Kalahari Review.