Brenton Sizwe Zola
Golden hour through the window is slumming light thick as honey, or maybe it’s honey I trace
onto the hollow of your throat. Here, you said once, is where the voice hides when the landlord
calls. Where the breath snags on the price of milk. I coat it slow, a prayer against the closing eyes
outside. Let them see only this shine, this temporary sun caught in the fine hairs above your
collarbone. It sticks, doesn’t it? This sweetness. This weight. Like the pawn shop chain your
uncle wore, leaving its ghost-print green each summer. We call it gilded, meaning almost gold,
meaning just enough light to make the dust motes dance on the sill, on the unpaid bills, on the
skin that remembers touch like a palimpsest. We call it gilded, like the great towers the barons
build to scrape the sky, to stamp their names like I impress my thumb into your hollow; feel the
pulse quickening, a small bird trapped beneath the sticky treasure. How easily, I think, a finger
could close here. A slow suffocation, sweet and golden. How easily the whole beautiful,
shimmering world could stop making noise.
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Brenton Sizwe Zola is a first-generation writer, interdisciplinary artist, and researcher. Informed by experiences of childhood homelessness, global travel, and a lineage of African spiritual leaders, his work examines themes of myth, spirit, and sanctity. He is the winner of the 2025 Marianne Russo Award at the Key West Literary Seminar (selected by Andre Dubus III) and his writing has appeared in Newsweek, American Theatre, Boulevard, and on NPR. A former Edith Wharton Writer-in-Residence, LinkedIn Creator Accelerator member, and Periplus Fellow, he holds an MFA from UCLA. Beyond the page, his work has been exhibited at institutions including the Denver Art Museum, with performance credits at the United Nations and MoMA.