What Remains After the Fire

By Maki Motapanyane

To every woman who has endured what should have broken her.

Time,
that strange and tender animal,
softened the sharpest edges.
And I, weary of holding
only the wound,
began to turn the blade into a mirror.

In What Remains After the Fire, Maki Motapanyane gently explores themes of rupture, survival, and the quiet work of reassembling the self, drawing on her personal experience to peel back the layers of time, memory, and healing for readers.

Motapanyane's poems are not memoir, but they are true, gathered into four arcs: Wound, Return, Kin, and Sanctum. Each poem is shaped by Motapanyane's life as a daughter, mother, survivor, and scholar, as she makes sense of the world from within its deep contradictions.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1038351847
• ISBN13: 9781038351845
• Release Date: January 2026
• Publisher: FriesenPress
• Length: 72 Pages
• Weight: 0.21 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 5.5" x 8.5"