Forty-two wakes up in control of his limbs and does not understand what has gone wrong. He wonders how long it has been since the day the Labyrinth won; it did not request anything from humanity but surrender, and over the first few months, forty-two and billions of other humans had given their bodies over … Read more
Say yes to Mr. Original Swag, and he will hold your hand, fit his rust-orange fedora on his head, and dance you out of the world. Take you to his arena, outside space and time. Yes, that’s his name. It’s what everyone calls him. And it’s how he introduced himself to me. I don’t know … Read more
ACCEPTANCE A place where heroes go to rot their flesh to white bone. We Blacks have it, down to the whitest bone. They said, they said, and we heard their words. Here we are, alive and clicking from having met the orators of our time. How alive are we, I ask you? I have asked. … Read more
After they married, Moleboheng and Tsepang were the image of the marital bliss she had always imagined. She baked every morning and filled their kitchen with a nostalgic sweetness. Moleboheng knew her way around the kitchen, and she had an especially good baking hand. A meticulous hand which always emerged from the flour bin with … Read more
‘Remember this: that the living heart that beats within you does not realise that it is part of something greater still. It sees only itself, and the fact that it is part of you does not enter its mind, and if you were to tell it that it is part of you, it would never … Read more
They ask you what Aliyah Danjuma reminds you of, and the word that bursts forth from your lips is the wrong one because you tell them she reminds you of glass. “Glass?” the man closest to you sputters out, a shaped eyebrow raised in condescension, “She reminds you of glass?” Yes, you want to say, … Read more
Gods love a good party, and it is the scribe spirit’s duty to record everything: heavenly decrees, the songs of the angels, and even the gossip the harmattan spirits and sandstorms whisper to each other as they kiss. Anansi’s cousin, the spirit of drunkenness, who once lived on the earth as a human, tells the … Read more
And the Lord said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thine power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand… Job 1: 12 The village of Kamadzi was the capital city’s underprivileged neighbour. One only had to drive a couple of miles outside Lilongwe before reaching the indistinct dirt road that branched … Read more
Minika stacks her waist beads one after the other. Red coral on eel-bone on bronze. Strength on wisdom on luck. She layers on the traits and breathes out the tying song in her low, gruff voice. The waistbeads sit on her low waist, over the bulge of her stomach. She fingers the beads reverently; she … Read more
The appeasement ceremony happens on a Wednesday morning. You don’t know that you’re lost. You will never know. Your Gogo and Mama stand under that baobab tree, the one where you had your first kiss stolen by a boy you will never remember, the one where you played nhodo with a friend who later tries … Read more