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]

I never imagined meeting my ghosts in a desert. I thought we would all come together when I was even older, more timeworn, defying gravity out of this body. But here she is, at my door in Behan, Arizona, darker than I remember her father… [2mins]

You gather your laundry, your basins, your dirty shoes and bags, and drop a pack of washing powder on top of the pile, before dragging it out of your room and into the corridor… [4mins]

You breathe in. Deep until you feel life. You cease there, as in death. You meet your eyes in the mirror as you exhale. You don’t smile… [2mins]

Your mother was still pregnant with you when she left the tranquillity of Port Harcourt for the fireworks of Onitsha with your father, in a truck loaded with all their property – a standing fan, two plastic chairs and a wooden table… [16mins]

Mother says there are locked rooms inside all women. Rooms where the sound doesn’t travel because it doesn’t know how. Shelters for all those things we think we shouldn’t be. [2mins]

This story was published as a finalist of the AFREADA x Africa Writes Competition.

A few weeks before we found Ma dangling by her neck, the same year that an airplane vanished, she had told me of the first time she had seen solid water… [2mins]

This story was published as a finalist of the AFREADA x Africa Writes Competition.