Showcase: Seeing You Again + Boys Don’t Cry + I Count + Evergreen

Edited by Claire Buss

Hello and welcome back to week three of our January Creative Writing Showcase. My name is Claire, I’m an author, Mum and Deputy Editor of Write On! Magazine. Our current theme is ‘Choices’ and, when you think about it, choices are everywhere, in everything that we do.

In the darker winter months, we often find ourselves thinking about those we have loved and lost. We also have a choice about how we remember them: in sadness, in joy or in hope for the future. The pieces I have selected for this Showcase share these emotional choices in prose and poetry. We begin with Seeing You Again, a realisation that those we lose are never really gone.

Seeing You Again

On Father’s Day, while I was shaving, I thought of him again.

I tried calculating how many years it had already been. Nineteen? Twenty? It was almost forgotten history since that day in May when my dad, an imposing giant, gasped the last time for air, then closed his eyes and started dreaming of a life in a different world.

It was a cold South African Winter morning on the day before his funeral and it reminded me of my dad’s forehead when I gave him a goodbye kiss as he lay in his coffin.

“Hope I see you again,” I whispered.

But that was the last time I saw him.

I tapped out the stubbles in the razor into the washing basin, just like my father taught me to do when you shave. My tears mixed with shaving cream and stubble water. I pulled the blade over my jaw again.

After my dad’s death, so many things of his stayed behind: shoes, briefcase, moth-eaten degrees, law books, dried-up pens, yellowed yesterday-pictures, wooden desk, tennis racquet, trainers. Then one thing after the other went missing. Gifted, lost, sold. Nothing of his scant possessions remained. He simply became invisible.

Where was he now? Would I ever see him again?

Occasionally, I would come across some of my dad’s old friends. In their mouths, his life story lived on. Then, just for a moment, he was there again. But I knew one day they, too, would be gone, like trees in a forest being chopped down, one after the other, until only a godforsaken plain would be left. In the end, all our stories would become forgotten.

“It is our ultimate destination,” my dad always cynically reminded me. He had spoken a lot to me about death, as though he were preparing for it. I could even hear him in my thoughts saying: “You simply must accept death, Martin.”

I realise that, Dad, I always wanted to retort, but I want to see you just one more time, especially now that it’s Father’s Day. Just see you laughing one more time, smiling, winking or see you at your desk, writing one of those many, profound research papers you wrote. If there was only a means to bend the laws of nature. Just cheating reality, a little bit. If you could live again for another hour, half-an-hour, ten minutes, five minutes, one minute, so that I could see you again.

A knock on the bathroom door startled me. My wife’s voice followed shortly after the knock. “Martin, is everything OK, love?“
“Yes,” I lied, “don’t worry. I’m just shaving quickly.”

I heard her footsteps disappear down the hallway.

When she’d gone, I told myself: ‘I will never see him again.’
I blew my nose and wiped the tears from my eyes.

Ssht-ssht. I pulled the razor blade over my cheeks. Just like my father, I have a rather robust beard, which is every razor blade‘s match. Each blade survived one shave and then I had to replace it again with a fresh one. Sometimes, I even had to use two per shave. Shaving was a torturous ritual for me. If I could have – to my dad’s chagrin – I would have sported a beard or a moustache. But my lad also hated it, so for their sake I shaved.

A large patch of my face was already smoothly shaven. I pulled the face towel closer and pressed it against my tender skin. I glanced at my reflection in the looking glass. The towel slipped out of my hand as I saw it. I whispered: “But… but there you are!”

The dark sleepless circles around the large eyes, the double chin, the broad head, the lush, curly hair. Undeniably him. Undeniably my dad.

I didn’t need to look any further, because he was here, right in front of me.

“Dad, you’ve been here the whole time!”

But I was too blind to see.

I winked. And my dad winked back.

(c) Martin X. Labuschagne, 2025

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I often think that poetry lends itself to sharing emotions in a way prose just cannot match. The following three poems all look at loss and coping in different ways, but each poem has quiet strength and a sense of purpose that resonates.

Boys Don’t Cry

 “I’ll do anything for you (in the dark).”
– Frank Ocean.

Not too long ago, I discovered a door
into my own body. I do my best
to leave it closed.

I learned, any door, leading to the past
only empties itself in the present.
A loop inside a loop.

Inside. I am walking
in circles. I understand
if you think I’m a fool.

There’s so much I still don’t
know how to do. Yesterday, I pulled my hands
out of my pocket to hold you.

In our shared grief, I could only think
of thermoregulation. I convinced myself
I will never need anyone to hold me.

Denying my ache is just another bad habit
I have. So, I hide my hands in my pocket,
and shrug my shoulders.

You tell me men will never be strong
if they do not learn to break themselves
open. I’m sorry, there’s still so much

I do not know how to do. But I can hold you.
in those nights we both struggle to fall asleep.

(c) Derek Ehiorobo , 2025

Connect with Derek on Facebook: Ehiorobo Derek, Instagram: @derekimagines and X: @derekimagines

*****

I Count

I count,
There isn’t an answer; instead, just listen
It’s not about fostering or adoption, but loss
The resolution to say no more
I count
The alternative to finding joy elsewhere
willpower to grieve and find another being
The outcome wasn’t the baby
Stop giving other options of surrogacy
The resolution to say no more
I count
the willpower to grieve and find another being
the choice
There isn’t an answer; instead, just listen
Grief isn’t linear
the purpose that everyone can’t always have a child
I count
too many hospital visits, injections, and losses
The resolution to say no more
I count
It is 2026 for me

(c) Tavinder K New, 2026

Connect with Tavinder on Instagram: @tavi_nderknew

*****

Evergreen

You are evergreen in my thoughts
I miss you
This time of year, the holes in family appear
Somehow the heat of summer
The growth of spring
And the fading warmth of autumn
Hold back the memories
But now
In winter
I miss you
Timeless you exist
Never changing
Frozen in happy memories
Of times gone by
Of hugs and love and smiling events
Evergreen you remain
Same smile
Same face
Same smell
Same powerful loss
That will always be constant
Like the pines that keep their leaves
I keep my sorrow at your passing

(c) Claire Buss, 2019

Connect with me on Instagram: @grasshopper2407

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