Empty Glass: Empty Glass

By: Vikile, Maanda

This is a story about empty glasses. Not the kind that are washed and put away, but the kind that sit on a tavern table long after the beer is finished, collecting the last foam and the last of a man's excuses. It is also a story about empty plates - the ones that wait at home while the money that should have filled them is already spent on Black Label and Aviator and the small, temporary warmth of the shebeen. The setting is Atteridgeville. The time is any Friday that feels like every Friday. The man at the centre is Thabo, who begins the day with three thousand five hundred rand in his pocket and ends it with nothing but the sound of his own footsteps on the path home and the knowledge that the woman who loves him has already learned not to ask. I did not invent the rhythm of this story. I have heard it in the voices of men who sat too long at the same tables, and in the quieter voices of the people who waited for them. What I have done is follow one of those men through the long afternoon of spending, the evening of empty glasses, the night of empty plates, and the slow, difficult work of deciding that the pattern can be broken. EMPTY GLASSES is about the cost of that pattern, and about the possibility - never guaranteed, never easy - of putting the glass down and building something that does not disappear by Sunday morning. It is about airtime sold from a plastic table, about small honest money, and about the long road back to a table where the plates are no longer empty. - Maanda Vikile, 202

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0HKDFCHPY
• ISBN13: 9798174828551
• Release Date: September 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 52 Pages
• Weight: 0.18 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"