When was the last time you said what you truly meant?
Intro and Selection by Alex Gwaze (Curator)
We live in a hyperconnected world where it is almost impossible not to reach someone. Social media, messaging apps, blogs—everywhere you look, people are speaking, posting, and performing. But amidst this constant exchange, a deeper question lingers: are we really communicating ourselves? Are we expressing the truths that sit in our chests—our doubts, regrets, desires, and inner contradictions? These works grapple with suppressed expression, fractured identity, and the silent weight of grief—whether in the form of personal regret, unrequited love, or the suffering of a wounded environment. They meditate on the fragile spaces between voice and silence, memory and loss, self and society.
Heavy tongue
BY BONFACE OTIENO OKINYI
Kenyan author, poet, and publisher, champions African literature. He’s a 2024 Best Educational Content Award winner and the 2025 Young Innovator of the Year Award recipient from Scholar Media Group Africa. He founded Bleeding Ink Global Writers Society, a 1000-member community of readers and writers.
Most times in my desperate moments
Moments of my weakness
Moments of heaviness
Heavy in the mind
Heavy in tongue
Heavy in the lips
Those moments sorry;
Is a million tones of garbage
Heaped on my being
Like unwanted torment
Like chaff of the wind
Like a disease so chronic
Like a disability …
These moments for sure
Are the very moments
I want to sincerely say sorry
With a pure heart.
Who touched you?
BY PRINCESS DANIEL
Nigerian award winning poetess, a content writer, a storyteller, scriptwriter, a graphic designer and a basketballer. She’s known for her pen name “Fortunate Writes.”
I’m jealous of the sky that luminates your handsomeness into my eyes,
I’m jealous of the wind that rebels through your clothes,
I’m jealous of the rain that into your skin it folds,
It’s closer than my shadow could be on you,
Ten freaky years away from your metre rule.
I’m jealous of the day you don’t come my way,
I’m jealous of those nights you keep me wake,
I’m jealous of the noon that keeps you unclad when alone,
It’s closer than my breath can be,
Ten freaky years of being drunk with memories.
I’m jealous of the love that isn’t saying my name,
I’m jealous of the art that isn’t speaking my pain,
I’m jealous of the memories that
never became a moment,
It’s closer than my eyes could read,
Ten freaky years of being your nobody.
All I do is walk through your night,
Holding my chest like a season that comes only once,
I’ve been holding my breath alongside my tears,
But tonight I’ll walk in your shoes and say to myself;
You’re not the end of the road.
Fractures
BY TAKUDZWA GONIWA
Zimbabwe Spoken word artist also known as “TearsintheSoil.” His works revolve around topics such as Masculinity, identity, love amongst others, usually focusing on the outward expression of his inner turmoil and longing.
The soil fractures.
The cracks spider web across the arachnid savannah.
It is overcast today,
the clouds stick to the sky like plaster.
The ground thrashes in anguish in
retaliation to unrelenting plunder.
If only the stones could speak,
If only mankind was a beast Mother Nature could teach.
The soil fractures.
The soil bleeds.
It’s vitality seeps out from its ripped seams
Like an unripe cocoon
This soil fractures,
This soil screams.
Never tiring,
hoping one day into our ears its pleas will reach.
Cover image from @pinterest
MUD Journal 