The solitary shoot springing out of the crack, breaking through concrete, fills me with a grudging and somewhat twisted sense of admiration. I can’t help but wonder at the power in this tiny living thing, and the irony that, in this single act of natural defiance, life has triumphed over death… [15mins]

I run after her as she’s forcing the money in her hand back inside her fancy handbag, I tap on her leg to draw her attention. When she looks at me, I quickly rub my palms vertically in three swift successive motions… [6mins]

Mother never lies. She once told me every woman had a little madness in her, which she could set free at any time… [2mins]

There is an old market woman growing inside of me. My mother weeps for me the night I birth blood. I feel the turbulence of an ocean in my womb being emptied. She says I have become a woman and I want to celebrate my womanhood but my brother looks morose and my father has fear in his eyes… [2mins]

When Rumor and her constantly wagging tongue had it that Obinna was cheating on his wife of three months with a nameless, faceless, seventeen-year-old with agbalumos for breasts, everyone blamed the bad sex… [10mins]

Rooster. Between two feet in the car where four people are hunched with pounding hearts because the sky has turned to ink and their tire has turned to flap… [10mins]

On the third day she came to visit, all the sharp edges in my house fell to pieces. I discovered them hour by painful hour, as I moved from dusty corridor, to bath, to wood-floored bedroom dotted with several months’ worth of shed hair and fluff… [3mins]