“A proud heart can survive general failure because such a failure does not prick its pride. It is more difficult and more bitter when a man fails alone…” – Chinua Achebe (Things Fall Apart)
The sun slowly drowned
There are certain things that do not change. The sun rises in the east. We eat rice on Sunday night. Every last Saturday of the month, Mama and I clean up our single-room apartment. The neighbourhood kids light up fire…
It’s a glorious Sunday morning. The clock on the wall reads twenty minutes past eight, and as I lay against Jimi’s well-built body, I note to myself my third lesson in love.
It has no shame.
It has been three…
The eyes that looked back at her in the mirror lacked expression. Expression had died with her first scream. Thereafter, all that had been was blankness.
She bathed carefully but quickly, each pass of the shower head washing the blood…
They were ten feet away. Dumebi calculated. On a particularly bad day, she went into her dad’s “handyman drawer”, as the household called it, and forced her thick wrists through piles of hammers, and boxes of nails until she felt…
We never spoke again after that day, not for lack of trying on his part. He did call, many times, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak to him. I was still trying to understand what had happened and too…
“I’ve never told this story to anyone before,” Tade said to Chudi and I. “Most new people we’ve met don’t ask, and Bimbo is the last person to raise the topic.”
“I’m sorry,” I put in, “I didn’t mean to…
I’m seated on the soft rug on the floor, between his legs. His fingers are dancing like a puppeteer’s fingers over my tangled, curly mop. With every move of his strong dextrous fingers, my rebellious hair obeys without fail like…
My name is Sheila, I’m 25 years old. This is my boyfriend. His name is Rob; he’s 60 years old. He has been in Nigeria for 3 years as part of a 5 year contract. We’ve been together 2 and…
When I returned to Lagos, Kafiyah, who knew how stressed I was over the wedding, insisted that we needed a movie night. On our way to Silverbird Cinemas, she said we had to make a quick stop at her house.…
