God Doesn't Smoke Dagga

I was asleep, not quite. You may call it a dream. I don't know what to call it. Do we dream even when we are awake, not quite; but not quite asleep, either? It was in this strange space between sleep and non-sleep, the attempt at sleep and the simultaneous attempt at remaining awake, trying to think through what I heard at the Johannesburg Hospital earlier in the day, that this picture of Lesedi visited me. It was by now a familiar picture. I have seen it often. We had spent many nights and dawns at each other's flats, in each other's beds and arms, mouths and the southern hemispheres.

Phaswane Mpe, Collected New South African Short Stories