Daughter / Wound

[by Nkateko Masinga for Hearts Unfiltered, the series]

I wrote everything / except what I was meant to

which is this / a letter to you / signed

your daughter / your wound

For three decades you have been

the axle on which the wheels

of my world have spun

I have studied you / in word and in deed

I have circled you

like a planet at war / and in need

I wrote everything I was meant to

except this

an apology

for the wound / that I shall continue

to be / though it fester

for a bristlecone pine’s lifespan

I wrote / except

I meant

I accept / everything

---

A Note to You from the Author

"I spent weeks agonising over what I would share with the world when I no longer wanted to have any part in its relentless spin. Grief had ushered my soul into an icy silence and my heart felt anything but unfiltered. One morning, I realised that there was still a daughterhood poem in me, despite Daughter Wound, my latest book, already being published and making its way across the UK. The difficulty in trying to bring the book here, home, to South Africa, felt akin to my struggle to articulate personally what I have asked the personae in my poems to say. So this poem, which woke me up at 01:00 on what would be an uneventful day (to the untrained eye, that is) and danced, tentatively at first, was a gift to me; an unofficial addendum to Daughter Wound, an appendage to the mothership."

---

Meet the Author: Nkateko Masinga

Nkateko Masinga is an award-winning South African writer and scholar. She is a 2019 Fellow of the Ebedi International Writers Residency, a 2018 Mandela Washington Fellow, and a Golden Key Scholar. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2018 and her work has received support from Pro Helvetia Johannesburg, the Swiss Arts Council, the Goethe-Institut South Africa in partnership with Hear My Voice, the Centre for Creative Arts, and others. In 2019, she co-won the Brittle Paper Anniversary Award. In 2024, she was shortlisted for the Evaristo Prize for African Poetry. Nkateko is the director of the Internship Program at Africa In Dialogue, as well as the founder and managing director of NSUKU Publishing Consultancy. She is a graduate of the University of Iowa's 2021 International Writing Program (IWP) and served as the guest editor of the ‘Please See Me’ Summer Supplement, composed of work by fellow IWP alumni. In 2022 she was selected by News24 as one of South Africa's 30 Young Mandelas of the Future. Nkateko's poetry has been translated into French, Bengali, Tamil, Kanada and Romanian. Her latest book, titled “Daughter Wound”, was published by UK publisher Hazel Press in April 2024 and was Book of the Week at the London Review Bookshop in its week of release.

---

This piece is one of four pieces part of an original storytelling series titled "Hearts Unfiltered". If you haven't already read the entire series, click below to read more about it and access all the other pieces.

Read all about the Hearts Unfiltered series here.