Akwaeke Emezi

“Never mind if she sat out on her balcony at home sometimes and fought the urge to find him again, wondered what they could be like if they hadn’t crashed together the way they had, wondered what could have been in another timeline.”

“maybe coming here was just going to layer more things onto him and make him so heavy that he would fold, crash under new and unexpected skins.”

“Maybe she should have known that if he didn’t love God the way she did, then he couldn’t have been the real answer to her prayers. This could have all been a false faith, and now her eyes were being torn open. If there was gratitude to give God for that clarity, that release from a lie, Aima couldn’t quite find it in her to send it up. Right now, she didn’t want to talk to God. All she had was a plate full of bitter silence.”

“She had tried explaining it so many times, but he was hung up on the woman she used to be, and she was disappointed in the man he still was.”

“You could be so intimate, so familiar with someone’s skin and flesh and spirit, only to wake up one day and find that it had receded from you, suddenly, like a tide rushing back out into the sea, leaving you with dissolving foam and a damp heart.”

“Osita wished, much later, that he’d told Vivek the truth then, that he was so beautiful he made the air around him dull, made Osita hard with desire. ‘Take it off,’ he snapped instead, his throat rough. ‘Put it back before they catch us.’””

“There was nothing boiling in him, just a loud and clear exhale, a weight of peace wrapping around his heart.””

“This was before Vivek, before the fire, before Chika would discover exactly how difficult it was to dig his own grave with the bones of his son.””

“"Art has always been a place where I could imagine freedom before I could live it."”

“"I've learned that I don't have to make myself smaller for other people to understand me."”

“"The body can carry many truths at the same time."”

“"I'm interested in telling stories that refuse easy explanations."”

“"Writing gave me a language for experiences I had never seen reflected anywhere else."”

“"Identity is not something I arrived at. It is something I continue to negotiate every day."”

“"I don't believe that stories have to make people comfortable. Sometimes they exist to unsettle us."”