Akwaeke Emezi

It was interesting for us to watch, how he didn’t even have to go anywhere in order to leave her.

She liked the city as an entity better; it didn’t care who you were or what your damage was, it ate everyone up indiscriminately.

I have lived many lives inside this body.

I lived many lives before they put me in this body.

I will live many lives when they take me out of it.

Sometimes the only god who hears your prayer is the one who intends to answer it.

To be singled out and locked into the blurred consciousness of a little mind? We refused. It would be madness.

We were not conscious but we were alive—in fact, the main problem was that we were a distinct we instead of being fully and just her.

Humans often pray and forget what their mouths can do, forget that every ear is listening, that when you direct your longing to the gods, they can take that personally.

The name meant, in its truest form, the egg of a python.

The first madness was that we were born, that they stuffed a god into a bag of skin.

They meant to punish her: they took her children, they filled her mouth with sand.