What is the Colour of a Broken Sky?
your toenails are broken (a little paint could lie for you)
only one earring dangles
(The other got lost somewhere
between a punch & a run.)
The First Congolese Man in Space
I was no longer in space, but in my bedroom. Mpoyo was gone, but Jana was still by my side, wiping my forehead and holding my hand. I looked at her and, for the first time, I clung to her, too.
Wálé
The last time he reached out was on his 50th birthday, six years ago. Your mother was still alive. He had sent a picture of his family a couple of years before that. It showed him and his wife, a Turkish woman, with one girl and a younger boy, lighter than anyone in your family has ever been.
The Bghlt el-Kaboor
[Hear the story in the author’s voice—audio reading included]
The girls watched as their grandmother fanned out the cash and examined the bills, searching for counterfeits, counting and recounting. Her bangles chattered like teeth on her arms.
There is No Space Left in Lagos City
Lagos is an immensely populated city. The population figure is so high that there is a running dispute between the National Population Commission and the Lagos government over how many people actually live here.
This Is How This Story Ends
It ends with a jaded god. Ogbunabali. The god who kills at night. They say he grants a request in exchange for five souls. It is called the ritual of exchange. It is well known. But, like every tale, there are four parts to it. The part you tell. The part I tell. The part we agree not to tell. The part Wiwe tells.
The Almost Love Story of Kwasi and Thomas
The waiter at the counter watches them. Short-lived glances driven by questions. Questions about these two men, none older than twenty-eight, who walk into a near-empty restaurant on a quiet evening.
Stomach Restructuring
He waited for applause but seemed not to care when none came. The campaign was over. Sleek talk and sweet words had lost their necessity.
Ajja and the Children of Nature
Many years after the beginning of time, Ajja, after years of childlessness and ridicule, had gone to the gods of the forest to ask for a child to brighten up her old age.
A Thousand Ways to Leave a City
One afternoon, I found a note under my door. Scribbled in pencil on torn paper. No name. Just the words: You cannot lie to a city that knows your footsteps.
Colors: An American Story
Intuitively, Tanjy understood that her family couldn’t compete in a social structure purposely and perfectly designed for the elite.
Eight Breaths and a Half
What she felt was well deserved guilt, guilt for the years she treated her sister like a burden, guilt from the fact that her sister was always having a faceoff with death while she was living her best life.
In My Country, There Are Over 250 Ways to Say Grief
When people see this on the news, they feel sorry that this is the place I call home.
sleep paralysis on the third night of Muharram
but look at the sky! how it
spreads! a thing in vastness