For SoNo…one of my favorite places in the world. And home.   Lately it had been hard to love Moyo. Not because she was any less the woman he had initially fallen in love with. It wasn’t as if she had suddenly changed either or picked up some terrible habit along the way. As far as any one could […]

  She tells Unuoma she won’t take his name at a time when it is too late for him to do anything about it other than make some disapproving grunts that soon become snores as she rubs his back in her tiny bed, in her even tinier room in her tiny apartment on 134th street West. It is here they […]

  There is something about the woman that reminds him of things forgotten. This is how he knows he is supposed to be with her. Even if only for a season. The first night they make love, she falls asleep weeping. The morning after, he asks her what had brought so much pain. “I am a sickler Oju. From childhood, […]

She has periods of quietness. They are long and unsettling. Unsettling because Sayo was never a quiet child. Of all our children, she was the noisiest. The one most like her mother, Ranti. The one I loved the most. I know parents aren’t allowed to have favorites. I know it is wrong and unfair to my three other children that […]

  Like everything else about her, Kiitan’s hair was difficult. All her life, only one hair dresser had not complained. Aunty Toyin, from Jakande Beach Estate. Only that sweet rotund woman had spoken lovingly, maybe sometimes in awe, about her thick, long and very unmanageable hair. Everyone else had complained; her mother, her aunties, even her friends who should know better. […]

Mr. Gbolagade Adeowuro 4 Midchester Avenue, White Plains NY 06007 Dear Gbolagade, These are the things no one told you but they should have… That Ifeade, your sister, the one you looked up to, the one you loved more than anyone else, even your parents, the one whose death forced you to be more than you ever were, the one […]

  The first time we kissed was unexpected; it was two people on a collision course that didn’t know how it would all end up. Worse still, it was in full view of others. By the second time, we were better prepared. I knew how his mouth tasted then, knew the crevices and the strength of his tongue. He wielded […]

Our children are bridges, structures made out of love, blood, flesh, and bone, connecting us to the past, hinging us to the future. It is too early for me to be awake  so I ignore the banging on the door that connects the room to that of the children and bury my head under the covers. My daughter is one of two, […]

  Simileoluwa couldn’t place exactly when she knew it wasn’t forever. The more she thought about it the more it eluded her. The one thing she was however sure of was that she had come about this piece of important knowledge too late. After the wedding, they had gone to Zanzibar. It had been everything honeymoons were meant to be. […]

He is no one to be scared of, Adunola knows. She has known this for a long time. He is comfortable, kind, safe, a friend. He drives her to the gorge on her 30th day home from the hospital. They don’t talk much on the drive there; she stares at the corn fields that encumber the roads they drive on […]