Before you were born, your mother had had three miscarriages and two dead children: one was a stillbirth and the other lived for only one year.

When she left my house that Sunday, smiling and dressed in my favourite white dress, my strawberry lipgloss shining on her lips, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, a beaded purse dangling at her shoulder, I hugged her and told her to be back before six.

You curl up on the bed trying hard to shut out the memory. When you close your eyes, you still see him glaring at you with bloodshot eyes; you can even perceive the marijuana stench that he wears like perfume.

On the surface, the coup looks like an Igbo plot: almost all its leading plotters were Igbo or Igbo-speaking, almost all its victims were non-Igbo, and Ironsi, who crushed it and became head of state, was Igbo.

What I really want/ is for you to let me be

There was only so much time before everyone else knew what she knew about bodies: they hide nothing and betray everything.

Your dermatologist, Dr Patik, says it’d get better, but there is really no cure. You’re a wilting tree.

He cooed over our newborn and gently stroked his cheek, smiling in unabashed adoration.

Pidgin English as a lingua franca in West Africa has united people, creating a bond that transcends borders.

You pushed the doctor into the waters of desire and made him drown in it. What is it about sorrow that makes humans just want to do sensual things?

Once you were my beloved. I swam/in rivers, then oceans, then not at all

Sometimes, my roots—Ife, Babalawo, his cowries, the gods, maami—they make it hard not to believe.

I am sad that grief breaks you into strong fragments/ of strength, for us.

To make things worse, she had no child—something that, in the eyes of her detractors, was the ultimate proof of her witchcraft.

I wanted to say I wasn't a big girl. I was only eleven years old! Eleven was still a child.

A poem by Ariyo Ahmad

I wondered what Mama was protecting about my late father. What dirty linen had she discovered and hidden before anyone came across it?

Imagine that as the song plays in your head, you wonder why your woman has chosen to change her skin.

Christina Purity bought a bottle full of curry spice and thyme and stuck it deep into her vagina so she could spice up her sex life

A story from The Hope, The Prayer, The Anthem. Written by Joshua Chizoma. Read by Amanda.