Photo: Renzo D'souza
Whenever rainwater meets earth, I press my nostrils against damp soil, allow the aromatic spices fill my gut till I fart out sunshine and kingly purple. I don’t know why, but whenever thumping rains beat at cracked earth, I tremble with delight, almost want to sink my fingers in loam, clay and sand to uncover their inner workings, like a lover’s forefinger dancing circles within the warm peaches of a lustful wife. Rain is a cloud of confetti and I want its shimmering dust to pour all over me, cleansing me of the worry, all the pressure, unleashing every hidden treasure. Why fit in if I lose myself? Why be droplets in a rivulet when my creativity can be an overflowing gash that fills out seas of writer’s ink, braves storms of writer’s block? Heaven is pouring down tonight. In the stillness, cloaking in winter’s humid, poking bleeding hearts staring out into space, as the sheer cold grips louvre blades with a quivering tang!
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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.
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.
[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.
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.
The guard whispers to his colleague in a tongue I’m too familiar with, the one whitened with otherness