“This is precisely the time an artist must go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. This is how civilizations heal.” - Toni Morrison

This is precisely the time an artist must go to work,
when sky splits open and spits fire into our mouths,
when the moon leaks poison into the streets.
They have crowned the wolf in the skin of a man—
and innocence bleeds thick,
bracken rivers carving through scuffed soles.
We are tied to the pyre now,
dancing in the ash,
our feet crushed beneath the Doc Martens of new gods.
The clock’s hands are no longer hands—they are knives,
and the hours spill out in thick, choking gasps.
There is no rest for the living,
no sleep in the cradle of hate,
where the air drones with a thousand eyes watching
our every breath,
our every thought,
like moths fluttering too close to the flames.
We are all out of silver spoons and miracles.
The children have stopped speaking.

We are teaching them how to bow without bending,
how to keep their tongues tied,
how to smile as the tyrant’s shadow grows long
and stains the sky red.
There are no names left to call out,
no cries for justice that haven’t been swallowed
by the dark mouth of the machine.
The sound of our sorrow has become a weapon.

This is the hour—
the hour when the artist must bleed,
when the pen must cut deeper than any sword,
when words must crawl out of the marrow of the bones
and paint the world with its brokenness.
The ink is poison,
but it is the only cure we have left.
The canvas is a prison,
and I must fill it with everything they’ve stolen from us.
The walls have ears now.
They listen with hunger,
grinning like wolves in the new moon.
and we are drowning in the silence they demand.
But somewhere in the distance,
there is a flicker of light—
a flicker of what was,
what could be,
a fire that cannot be contained.
We are living in a fever dream,
where truth is a weapon,
and every word is a battle cry.
The artist is the last witness,
the last defender of the forgotten names,
the last song in a country that no longer knows how to sing.
But we write.
We paint.
We carve into the stone of this new era,
knowing that the walls will burn
before they take our voices.
This is precisely the time an artist must go to work—
for the world is ending,
and the tyrants are laughing.
We will not bow.
We will write the fire into history,
and when they try to bury us,
we will be the smoke they cannot erase.

Veda Villiers (she/her), 23, is passionate about speculative fiction and poetry that probes the complexities of the human experience. Her works have appeared and are forthcoming in Gamut, Radon Journal, Heartlines and Star*Line. Though her day job keeps her busy, you can find her at @VedaVilliers on X (formerly known as Twitter) and Bluesky.