Every so often, a former shag buddy of mine mentions this egregious lie that he believes to be fact. He’s married to someone else because I came off as not wanting to be in a relationship. Ever. It’s in the things I say, apparently. Like my longing for a guy disappearing after a quick wank. Konji, not love I reply. Not just…
My first landlord was cheap. We had a broken boiler in the middle of a cold Liverpool winter. In a house where the radiators stayed lukewarm despite the ticks of the pipes, my brother, sister and I would stand in the hallway, frost floating out of our mouths, warming ourselves up with futile talk about reporting the landlord to the…
Picture a child, all her parents’ hopes and dreams distilled into flesh. When she is born, in a state of the art hospital in the town of Gboko, her birth almost untethers her mother. Her mother’s life is held stubbornly in the hands of an obstetrician fully trained at the university up the road. His voice is the first that…
Sometime in the 90’s, somewhere between moving away from us doing the running man to doing Patra’s butterfly, my mother was made a deaconess at her church. In keeping with her new position, I assumed, we began to have house fellowships. We, the reluctant attendees, were encouraged to invite our friends but inevitably ended up with the same circle in…
I said wait Come over here and pile some food on this plate I ain’t going to gym bitch, I ain’t lifting no weights Look at me I’m sickening, yeah yeah yeah I’m sickening I may be fat bitch, but you’re ugly and I can lose weight Weight by Latrice Royale I’ve spent too many minutes in my life thinking…
I’m eight years old and we are in Benue. My family and I had been travelling for hours and had just gotten into Ucha. We children are gathered round the biggest bowl of pounded yam I have ever seen. On the white mound of the pounded yam, there is a small splash of brown water from hastily washed hands. But…
My grandmother Aya used to pull her children and grandchildren to her side every Christmas holiday. We came from Lagos, Jos and Zaria and would stay at Aya’s compound in Zaki Biam, my hometown. Zaki Biam is a tiny place almost dissected cleanly into two by a major road. It rose to the national conscience in 2001 after soldiers killed over…
Modest Mouse, is probably best known for their Grammy nominated single ‘Float On’ from the album “Good News for People who Love Bad News”. It has that fantastic line “A fake Jamaican took every last dime with that scam.” From the same album, the song Ocean Breathes Salty talks about death but with upbeat-ish music. The first line goes: “Your body may…