Dear Baba, I sit my mother down this morning to dig from her throat everything about you. I have been hearing about you in bits while peeling cassava with my brother, Ridwan, or while sieving the soaked cassava into a bowl of water, or while sitting down outside when heat beat us out of our […]
A previous version of this story originally appeared in Polyphony Lit Journal . We keep leather-bound photo albums on bookshelves. Dust coats the front covers, reminding us to read our memories like encyclopedias, to search for the definitions of who we could have been. My mother has organized them by year and stacked them onto […]
Content warning: references to child abuse, eating disorders, and dieting . 10. You are ten years old.It’s back-to-school shopping season. Your mother is taking you back to school shopping, and you want to get some new Bobby Jack shirts to wear to school. You pick out a few that you like and try them on, […]
The worst nightmares I have are always me running. They aren’t about my Black or my woman or my teenaged girl. They are only about the chase. What I am running from, it usually depends—sometimes it’s a man, a killer, other times I’m not sure why I’m running—but my nightmares are almost always about hiding, […]
Content warning: reference to sexual abuse, violence. There is no Igbo word for cousin, so we call each other brother. You are two years my senior and you become the big brother I seek. A fine body of water is spread out before us, water lilies and shrubs form uneven partitions on its top. The […]
I keep looking out my bedroom window. My window is small and squeaky, above the old radiator that gives my room the best heat in the house come winter. If I lean over the radiator just far enough, I can see the mail truck in its usual spot across the street, outside the house with […]
My mother has cancer. The notion bumps into the more pressing matters of “I’m hungry” and “with a full fridge, why is there nothing to eat?” Heartless. The streets are empty at five AM. I drive her to the only good hospital in town. I think of the nice mocha latte I will have when […]
Content Warning: Themes of suicide. We’d rather wait for a game of four-on-four to end than play there. And gathered around the perimeter and sitting crossed-legged on the grass, we’d watch bodies bounce with the ball up and down the court for however long to a game of twenty-one. A rule passed from some kid […]