my friend comes across a girl in a grocery store

“Bro. Bro. Who’s that?” Davis points at a tiny girl at the back, poring over toothpaste brands.

“I don’t know, chale,” I pause, following his hand. “I think she moved here last week.” There’s been an influx of new people in the store since they opened up that new apartment complex last year. Business isn’t good, but it’s better. “She’s called Mary, I think.”

“Oh, I see.” He looks contemplative. I smile. His effort at pause is amusing – because we both know what is about to happen, what has already happened: Two minutes after the girl leaves, there will be a work emergency Davis simply has to attend to (He’s been invaluable in the 3 months he’s been working there, apparently). He’ll skip out my store with apologies and promises to come by next week. He will be here next week, with stories about surreal (but coincidental) encounters with this girl, stories draped with animated gestures and pacing, and dopey smiles. I will smile too, in soft encouragement, appropriately happy for him.

********************************

Davis has a penchant for mundane girls. He holds on to the conviction that there’s a secret magical waterfall hiding out beneath every plain-looking girl he meets, and so he’s constantly asking about small-boned 20somethings with shy smiles and braids. Sometimes they’re bespectacled, sometimes they’re fervently Christian. Invariably they have forgettable names like Mary and Nana Yaa.

He’s constantly flitting through their lives and he never finds anything, but he’s hopeful. If I could harness the amount of hope Davis expends on one miniature church girl, I could power my home generator for 2 years.

How To Break Up Properly

one prepares for a

breakup like any other inevitable calamity—

you stock up

for hard days ahead

You had, in happier times, affection and

laughter, camaraderie. and now

you will have only

vacuum – soundless space,

thoughts you don’t

want; what do you do?

You dust off your contact list

you search up old friends

you make apologies and smalltalk,

you say “I’m back in the fold,”

like you mean it, enthusiastically:

Single gang. nowhere else I’d rather be. woohoo.

You had identity. It was

fraught with demands and

emotional accounting, but you

carried its weight as proudly

as any diamond ring

Now you’re here, newborn, featureless,

naked; what do you do?

You wail at the injustice of it all

(accompanied, perhaps, by Adele?)

and you clothe yourself:

gym freak, jazz enthusiast

holder of positive vibes, bible student,

twitter addict.

it gets you through the day

Nights will be another matter,

but a problem at a time

On the Matrix, Malcolm X and Soaps. Oh and Privilege

I was fifteen when I read The Autobiography of Malcom X for the first time. For the next 3 months, I was Malcolm reborn. Actually I was an irritating, whiny Malcolm without the original’s particular brand of eloquence, but that didn’t stop me from launching a tirade at everyone I saw in a weave (“You let the white man degrade you with this mockery of hair?”) and posting every couple of days on my blog about how the white man was holding us down. It was a very cringeworthy time with a lot of stunts I’d rather forget, the saddest of which would be when I huffily declined an offer from my parents to go tour USA. My parents don’t make these kinds of offers twice, especially not to ungrateful children who refuse them with,“I want nothing to do with that horrid infested place.” I haven’t even been to Togo since.

I gave up on my crusade because, well, I live in Accra. I could count the number of white people I’d seen in my neighborhood on one hand, and so accusations of “the white man is holding your hair hostage!” would’ve seemed a tad far-fetched, even from someone who didn’t look and smell like a sewage plant. (I believed that The White Companies™️ were out to sterilize Africa, so I also abandoned soaps.) Also I had a massive crush on a girl who insisted I bath and stop the crazy talk, so that was that.

In recent years, I’ve come to understand the actual struggle that black Americans face each day, and my little stunt 8 years ago seems even sillier. Mockingly insensitive, even. It did give me insight, though, into that constant emotional upheaval that comes from living in direct contact with oppressors, and the frustration of being forced to make yourself mild to suit, in one way or the other, the very people you seek independence from. It’s a useful thing to understand, the turmoil that one goes through when engaging in “civil discourse” with people you’re unwillingly entangled with.

I think it’s particularly useful at this point in history, with feminism at its peak. The most common phrase now, one that is almost cool to say, is some variation of “Oh, I believe in feminism, but it seems more like misandry than anything else, recently. So much anger,” and I’m sad to say that I actually used to say this too, before I actually sat down to think about what it must be to be female. And it is like this:

You are born into a centuries old system that has been designed to let you cater to another group of people, people you really only differ from by the reproductive organs you possess. You are virtually a second-class citizen. The cleverness of it all is that this system is so ingrained and accepted, with little badges of “honor” here and there, like marriage titles and approval for being able to pop out babies speedily/prepare food for men – things that don’t mean much on a grand scale of things – so much so that other subjugated females would go toe-to-toe with you for attempting to dismantle it. It is entirely possible to be born female, and, propped up on these little tokens of approval, go through life and die thinking that you’ve achieved so much, and not realize that you’ve been conned.

Whew. It’s like I’m 15 again. I bathed this morning though.

Seeing things as they really are for the first time, for a female, I imagine, must be like waking up from the matrix, with the unfortunate complication that you’re not Neo. You don’t automatically gain the ability to take the system apart just by seeing that it’s all an illusion. The black men in trench coats still control your paychecks, and they use your anger against you by branding you an unreasonable angry misandrist, clouding all your arguments against them. Seeing things as they are, though, for me, a male, is like realizing that I’m one of, or related to, the machines colonizing earth and that there is an entire race of people that I’ve unwittingly been using as fodder. It introduces an interesting little word: Privilege.

A friend of mine came to visit my sister and I about two weeks ago, and feminism came up. I passed a comment about one thing or the other and I was firmly met with, “Paul, you don’t get to make commentary on how females handle feminism. You are the oppressor. If you want to help, talk to other men, not us.” And I was like…?? Small comment I wanted to pass? I was upset for a second, and then I tried to empathize with her, to see where she was coming from. I understood her, really, but at the same time, I knew my intentions behind what I’d said, and I genuinely had no oppressive intentions in any way or form. I tried explaining this to her, and was met with louder rebuttals mid-sentence. I angrily gave up and went outside. I’ve gained a better understanding of how things actually are since then, and her attitude (though still very annoying) makes some sense.

As a way of explanation, I heard someone use the “rabid dog” analogy to explain how institutionalized racism worked to a white person who didn’t understand why he had to bear any guilt for simply being white.

To wit: you have a dog, or your friend/neighbor/cousin has a rabid dog that keeps biting powerless people. You may not be harming the infected people yourself, but if you have any sort of a conscience, empathy, or anything other than Hitler’s heart, really, doing anything short of getting the dog out down, or putting down the dog yourself against the wishes of your friend/neighbour/cousin ( knowing that the repercussions for you will be but a fraction of that on the people being bitten) is simply not enough.

(Oh, and sending out newsletters to the neighborhood that read “The rabid dog comes out at 8pm, so kindly stay indoors at this time, and everything should be fine,” instead of the aforementioned solution, may be coming from a place of goodwill, but it is also cowardly to the point of being complicit.)

It’s a little more complicated than that, of course. Anybody could shoot a dog, but these dogs have connections and benefit from protection of other dogs, etc, so taking a shotgun and swinging it about doesn’t do much for you. Which is laughably ironic, considering the shooting situation in America right now.

So you ask; how much is enough? In the analogy, all I have to do is take down a dog. In real life, though, one has to constantly go out of their way to point out prejudice and actively fight it. They may have better luck than females in the same position, yes, but there is still every possibility of personal harm, ridicule, loss of one’s job, etc.

Again, these pale in comparison with the hardships that women have to endure, the cruelty they experience when they go against the norm: being killed, being branded witches, etc. It really makes me feel silly for protesting about a little ridicule. Especially from the perspective of a female, I can understand their impatience for men who want to be recognized for things as little as hindering patriarchy in some small way, because there’s so much to be done, and these little tokens are basically inconsequential.

But again on the side of a male: to extend the analogy, you hear that your friend/cousin has a dog they love very much, who is rabid, unfortunately. You live a couple of neighborhoods away, and you hear reports of this happening. Your cousin is also the family black sheep, who has a drug problem and carries a gun. Overall, walking into all that requires a lot of personal motivation, some extreme sense of righteous indignation, or both.

Bringing that back into real life, people like myself have grown up with two working parents whose roles only differ in the things they pay for, and not who cooks or cleans. I have seen a girl at the top of my class at almost every level, and I had not been given any indication that females were inferior in any way. It was why it took me quite a while to really face the reality of what was going on, and it’s why, for a long time, I could not quite muster up enough courage. I used to tell myself that common human decency dictated a certain extent of action, but beyond that, you needed some other form of motivation and since none of such were forthcoming, ah well.

While I now find this opinion to be as cowardly as the first, I’ve spoken to a number of males and I’ve slowly come to understand that Ghanaians are able to hold the position they have because we’re very tightly willfully cloaked in ignorance and indifference. Your “contemporary” Ghanaian who might fashion himself “a good guy” could say that he has no opinion whatsoever on the LGBT+ community other than a passing curiosity, and think that good enough, because, “At least I’m not saying they should burn or they’re disgusting, I’m just minding my own business,” and the same would apply to your average good guy who finds feminist twitter rants excessive because he’s surrounded by high powered females and doesn’t see what the anger is about. He’s not, after all, in India, where prepubescent girls are forced to marry grown men, and even if it’s happening in Ghana, he’s personally not seen it, so he’s fine where he is.

This might be the most harmless opinion of marginalized groups you’ll find in Ghana, and that is startling.

Feminists, rightly, have no patience for this explanation. They’re dealing with trauma, systematic oppression from males and females, and they have no time for men who want a gold star and a hand to guide them through the struggle like kindergarteners. So they come across as harsh, as my friend from earlier did.

This, I think, is why the term coined for the racial counterpart of this issue is so clever; white guilt. Whoever comes up with these words is a genius. I used to think the term referred to the guilt of being white/being born male, and realizing that you were part of an oppressive class. I see it differently now, though. The guilt is in realizing just what extent you’ll have to go through to help dismantle the oppressive system you’ve unwittingly been part of, and deciding,”Yeah this is my stop. I have a family to feed, I can’t do anymore than this,” etc, but still waking up to reports of women being dragged to be stoned for refusing to keep quiet, or black people being shot practically for leisure by law officers, and feeling like crap.

The guilt will always exist, because barring some other circumstance (“I gave birth and I realized how important women are and how much I need to protect them”- another trope by males everywhere), there’s only so much the machine outside the matrix could/would do, knowing that it would almost certainly mean its death. And that is the truly hateful fact about privilege; you can decide where to stop and still feel justified.

This Isn’t About My Playlist, It’s About Solitude

“I hope that she will not get off the bus before my stop at CMS, so that I can hop off as she does, walk alongside her, interrogate her. So that I can say to her, with the wild look common to all those who are crazed by overidentification, “We must talk. We have much to say to each other. Let me explain.”

-Teju Cole, Every Day is For the Thief

I was shuffling through my music library this afternoon and I saw a song I hadn’t listened to in 4 years, probably. I jumped up and shouted. This was a song I’d listened to for years, and then somehow it had slipped off my phone and my mind. Tears came to my eyes, I kid you not. I was ecstatic. And then I felt the immediate urge to reach for my phone and tell someone. I didn’t, because I chose to write this instead.

The basic need that drives most of my personal human connections, is, I think, the need to be understood. There is a need for someone to see something exactly how I do, for someone to have exactly the opinion I share of this politician or that painting. I’m startled with joy when I overhear some obscure song I love through a stranger’s earphones on a trotro, or see my favorite book in some person’s lap. There is this certainty that I’ve found a piece in my life puzzle and I cannot let them go without letting them know this. Teju Cole describes it perfectly when he’s imagining what to say to a girl in a bus reading a book he loves. “We must talk. We have much to say to each other. Let me explain.”

(There is the temptation to make this a commentary on the stereotypes that have been bred off of this need for same-ness (“Oh we’re soulmates! We’re the only two people who love this music/game/ [insert other nerdy but charming activity] and its so romantic!” etc), but I won’t, as I’m not really sure what role common interests play in romantic compatibility. I’m writing this about solitude.)

Anyway.

I’m not sure exactly when this need became so central to all my interactions. Maybe it got stronger as I grew and my interests became less and less popular. I’ve always had an urge to show people things, to display. I’m still not sure if it’s my mind’s unconscious way of showing off what I know or it’s a genuine urge to teach people things, but whatever it is, my thought process has more or less been “Wow! Look at this amazing thing I’ve found! Hey, have you seen this amazing thing? You’ll love it! Go watch/listen to it! You don’t like it? Watch it again, you’ll love it! No? You still don’t? Go try agai-”

So there I was, with a range of weird interests, a need to shove said interests down the throats of, well, everyone, and this conviction that if I loved something so much, the beauty of it must be undeniable. Throw all of these in and you can imagine how badly it went. I think I have about 4 friends who eventually gave up and just said,”Paul it’s okay wai. Don’t send me any more songs to listen to,” and it seems hilarious now but at the time I felt so betrayed. It didn’t help, of course, that I did find a few people who thought my music/literature taste was beautiful and drank in almost all that I had, and so it only reinforced my idea that there were a special group of people who loved the things I did, and that it was somehow a mark of solidarity.

I wish I was writing this as someone looking back with some amusement at a past problem that isn’t even worth thinking about anymore, but I’m still struggling very much to rid myself of these ideas in my head. It’s been helped by realising a few things:

First, that my life isn’t the main character in the universe. There is a tendency to think of our lives as so nuanced and filled with so many little pressure points that it’s impossible for anyone to make a clear-cut assumption about us. It is why we find it easy to forgive ourselves for things we’d cut others off for doing; we have ready excuses in our past and in weaknesses that only we know, and so we can’t hold ourselves to the absolute standards we have for others. It’s insulting when people try to categorise us. “You don’t know my life!” You’re right. Your life is infinitely complex, much more than even you may think. It is important, though, to accept that everyone’s life is as complex as yours is. If laid out side by side, you may have had a more harrowing childhood or a more dramatic love life, but it doesn’t matter because the only life we all know well enough is ours, and so it is our standard. You can’t ever know someone else’s life well enough to compare.

Now imagine someone coming across to you and pointing at something mundane you’re doing and saying, “Based on my calculations, this means we’re meant to be in each other’s lives, because what you’re doing obviously means you’re so and so, and that is compatible with who I am.” You could’ve been doing that thing for any number of reasons, and it would seem absurd for anyone to feel like such a basic relation could apply to your life. If it doesn’t apply to you, then it likely doesn’t cut across to anyone else either. It helps if you think of this when you step out to socialise. It also helps you deal with rejection, on a side note. It’s easier to accept anything if you respect people as three-dimensional beings given to their own whims, who can reject you without an explanation. You are not the main character in someone else’s life story, and so you don’t get to pick and choose which life to enter.

Secondly, based off of my first point, it is important that I learn how to let it be enough that I know something or that I love something. The danger in wanting to share everything you do is that you start to keep your audience in mind, and in a natural bid to let people continue to admire what you give them, it starts to shape what you do. A friend of mine commented once that I listened to some things or read some things so I could play the role of the eccentric wayward artist, and that there was an element of pretension in it. I thought the argument was flawed, as my aim in all this is to connect with people and deliberately being obscure sort of nullifies that, but it did make me think about something else. Why is it necessary that I share the things I come across? If, truly, it amuses me, why is it not enough that it amuses me? At some point it looks like I’m trying to justify my interests by having someone else acknowledge them, and thinking about it, it seems pretty stupid to me. I’ve found a song I like. Why must someone else like it? I like it. This seems like basic logic, yes, but I still find myself secretly hoping someone sees my playlist and goes “Wow, you love all the songs I love!” I’m making strides, deliberately keeping most of what I enjoy to myself, in a bid to starve that need until my interests are mine alone.

On another side note, I think the balance between keeping beauty to yourself and wanting others to connect is pretty similar for artists. One second it’s, “This is what I’ve done and it is beautiful to me, I don’t need anyone else to like it!” and the next moment, ”So nobody likes my poem? After all my hard work?”

If The Stars Worship You

Time has progressed and we have progressed with it and

Now we know that we aren’t a solitary flat plane of earth underneath a trail of clouds. The word “universe” evokes something else entirely; a world of distances so vast we speak in terms of how long it takes light to travel, and sizes so great that the units simply have to stop at a point, as the pages aren’t enough anymore.

We speak of black holes now, and antimatter and gravity on scales that Newton couldn’t have imagined and

In the midst of this explosion of knowledge, the medieval man who was raised to believe in God simply as the Being who kept his cattle herd and crops safe, and forgave him when he stole, well, such a man would suddenly find his belief stripped away. You could hardly blame him; the world is a much bigger place than he imaged, bigger than his sheep and his theft, and it becomes absurd to relate the God of crops and cattle with the God of this new spectacular universe of gas giants and supernovas.

But for us who find God outside of logic and physics and have Him stamped like indelible ink in the story of our lives, it creates a different problem; one of imagination. We too grow up believing in God in terms of our problems – sickness and grief and heartbreak and poverty, and that is Mighty enough for us. A God who saves us from our fleshly weaknesses and vileness and grants us respite from this world is deserving of our worship, is He not?

And yet the world grows and our definition of what it means to be God expands. We are not a flat plane. We are, size-wise, insignificant in the general scheme of the universe. It further expands. We are on a sphere hurtling and revolving at a mind-boggling speed around a flaming ball of gas, the size of which could engulf hundreds of Earths. Our figurative mouths are open now and we can’t shut them, because

The very first line of Genesis now seems like something else entirely, something frightening. All of this was created by one Hand? And what does this mean: “And God said, ‘Let there be light, and there was light’”?

What manner of Power sets alight this cascade of existence with four words?

Casual miracles we oohed and aahed at church as children now twist our minds and turn them upside down. Stars guided the three wise men and moved ahead of them, and then stopped at the spot where Jesus had been born. We have learnt what the light from stars are, that what we see of stars are remnants, like old photographs, light traveling to our eyes from such distances that it takes years to reach us. The stars could be, for all we know, dead. What does it mean, then? When were the stars set in motion? What happened? Can we even define it?

Joshua prayed to God and the sun stopped a day in the skies. The sun couldn’t have moved, we know that now; it must’ve been the earth. The earth, moving at speeds of thousands of kilometers per second, was stopped at the behest of an insignificant human. God did that, as casually as one would flick a hand.

My definition of God makes me dizzy now, when I think of it, and yet I know that the true, actual meaning of it is infinitely more, something that would likely make my nose bleed. It terrifies me, this sheer power, gives me some understanding of what Paul meant when he said, “It is a terrible thing to be in the hands of God,” but it also comforts me. What is there to fear? What, really, in whatever world, could give us any sort of pause? You have One who moves stars telling you, “..I know the thoughts I have towards you, thoughts of good and not of evil.”

What am I to do with all this awe, all this blinding fear that stretches tight my imagination?

I am to worship

Childhood

There’s a joke I remember from childhood:

Two robbers are hiding out in a cemetery after raiding a house. When the coast is clear, they decide to share the loot there, to save time.

An old man, taking a walk home by the cemetery, overhears two deep male voices in the cemetery, murmuring;

“This is mine. This is mine too.”

“No! that one is mine!”

In a panic, he runs into the town square, shouting, “God is bargaining for our souls with the Devil! Come, let’s go and beg God!”

The joke ends with a punchline I can’t remember: something funny that the robbers say when the entire town turns up at the cemetery.

I can’t remember it, but as it often is with childhood memories, it’s not the punchline that’s the point, it’s everything else.

Blinded

He’d been married almost 2 years. Two whole years, but sometimes he was startled to find a sleeping figure in his bed when he woke.

He’d lay awake, waiting for morning, and the dark grey light would shape out a pale face on the pillow right in front of him, its mouth slightly open in sleep.

Blank panic would engulf him for a second (Who-?”) and then the thought: It’s your wife. It’s just your wife, calm down.

Just last Monday, they’d been out walking to the salon and her voice had startled him out of his thoughts; she was laughing at something on her phone.

It seemed so alien, the idea of another laugh he would hear for the entirety of his life.

It wasn’t love, or lack of it. He knew he loved her, it was just the idea of her otherness, the novelty of it – it startled him, excited him, repulsed him.

Inspired by the music video Blinded, by Emmitt Fenn.

But It Claws Its Way Out

                                                                 
“Beloved, we are gathered…” 

Sekou was shaking. He was grateful his suit was several sizes larger his size, so it wasn’t so visible. His palms were slick with sweat; he couldn’t wipe them on his trousers anymore, or they’d start looking moist, like he’d wet himself. He did, incidentally, feel like wetting himself. Be brave, Sekou. 

 “The two families have been waiting for this glorious day..” 

The man’s voice sounded miles away; he couldn’t hear anything over the blood pounding in his ears. 

Sekou, be brave. It was his mother’s childhood mantra. He would come running home in bruises, after the older neighbourhood boys had beaten him up or after someone in class had confronted him and he’d fled. His mother only ever had that to say. Fight back, be brave. He never did. He had hated himself for it all his life, but he could not bring himself to stand up to anyone, always taking the conciliatory way out. If anyone so much as raised their voice at him, he cowed, and spent the next few hours burning with mute resentment. 

And here he was now, unable to run, unable to do anything but stand waiting. He’d been instinctively throwing panicked glances at the front pew where he knew his parents sat, but he wasn’t wearing his glasses; it was all a blur. 

He was not prepared for this. He was not ready to be married, and especially not to this woman.

 Why was he still here? 

The belch of the organ swelled in volume all of a sudden, and the procession entered, his wife-to-be demurely walking behind two flower girls, hand in hand with her father. She looked beautiful, Agyeiwaa. She’d collected ridiculous sums of money for the dresses and cakes and whatever else she’d gotten (“12,000? For a dress?” She’d coldly replied with,”You don’t know anything about weddings, do you?”) and left him in quite a bit of debt. The dress wasn’t worth 12,000 cedis, but it was certainly flattering, with the way it lightly emphasized her curves. He thought he heard a few whistles from the back where his cousins sat. He would’ve been amused another day, but today his face was taut with fear. He wasn’t hiding it. Grooms looked emotional when they saw their brides approaching sometimes, he knew, so perhaps they’d ignore it, applaud him, even. 
Agyeiwaa would know, though. She was halfway across the hall now, and her face was veiled, but he knew what he’d find when he took off the veil; a disappointed sneer. Was he really marrying this woman? 

                                                                  ***
Agyeiwaa walked leisurely down the aisle, head modestly downcast, watching the grey petals thrown on the carpet ahead of her. She was aglow. This was her day! Her wedding day! She looked around; it was perfect. She hadn’t gotten round to selecting the organ piece and it sounded gaudy, but she could forget that because everyone’s eyes were on her dress, and the cathedral was the one she’d fantasized about since she was 8, and her father looked so happy it was silly. 

Everything was perfect.

Her eyes finally rested on her fiancé. Sekou looked like he was waiting for his death. That was fine. It could ruin your mood to be walking down the aisle to a man who looked like he’d rather be anywhere else, but Agyeiwaa had always been nothing if not pragmatic. One took what one got in life. He wasn’t the most courageous man, but he was smart, and he would succeed. He’d even been romantic back when he was trying to get her to sleep with him. She wasn’t bothered so much; they had the rest of their lives. He would learn.

It had saddened her a bit that fate had saddled her with a weak man, but she was not greedy. She knew how lucky she was that everything else had fallen into place. Now, look at her, 2 months pregnant, marrying a successful man in the making, well on her way to a stable home. She wasn’t completely sure the baby was his, but what did it matter? One did not take a woman to bed unprepared for all possible consequences. So he’d accepted her proposal (after begging, shouting, threatening, everything, really, to get out of it) and now they were almost married.

She stared at his terrified face through her veil, and smiled a little pitying smile. More and more, recently, she’d wondered how it would be, always so afraid of life. She sympathized with him, loved him, even. He was a spineless fool, but he had a way about him. She thought of how her uncertain past was clearing up into a clear future, and her smile widened into a grin. She wanted to break into dance. 

                        ***
Sekou had been truly brave in his life just once, the night before. What he’d done made him physically sick just thinking about it, but earlier that day Agyeiwaa had attacked him again for money, shutting down his protests with taunts about his manhood. He’d seen a picture of what the rest of his life would be; day after day of aggressive demands, pushing, draining him of his money for herself and soon for a child he was sure wasn’t his, for the entire length of his life, till he broke down and died of misery. 

So he’d manned up and did the brave thing. 

But here she was, still, gliding to him like a scepter amidst the chatter in the church. She was still here. He was so frustrated he almost felt like crying. 

She stopped and turned to face him, head slightly bowed. He bent and lifted her veil. For a second her beauty rocked him, contempt and all.

“Who gives away the bride..”

“Does anyone have any reason..” 

The priest spoke and he went through the motions, woodenly. 

                                                         ***

Agyeiwaa’s stomach rumbled, and she pressed her hand to her abdomen. Was it the food she’d eaten this morning? She would sue the hotel if she had an upset stomach, today of all days. She hadn’t even bloody ordered for the food.

“We shall proceed to the vows. Kindly take out the ring, my son. Please repeat after me.” The priest turned to Agyeiwaa. 

“I, insert your name…” 

“I, Agyeiwaa Aduhene,” her voice shook a bit, like she was scared. Agyeiwaa never sounded scared. Sekou look more closely and saw her face was coated in sweat. Her eyes were getting bloodshot.

“..take this man, insert his name..”

“Take this man, Sekou Adidi..” She felt dizzy, and her throat was clenched. She opened her mouth to speak, and all that came out was a whisper. What was happening to her? “I..l..” She was swaying now, unable to stand. Sekou reached out and held her by the waist, curious. The people were shouting now. Her family was on their feet, and her mother made to come forward, but he held out his hand. He was a doctor, he would take care of this. She sagged into his arms, little moans of pain escaping her. Whatever was happening to her was taking effect quickly. He checked under her eyelids and alarm clouded his features. 

He shouted, “Someone get a car out!” but he knew it was futile, as the priest hoisted up his robes and run outside. The sides of her mouth were beginning to froth. His heartbeat skyrocketed. Her skin was turning clammy in his hands, and he looked around for something to help, knowing there was none. He raised himself up into a crouch, holding her. Tears flowed down his face, tears of self-disgust and relief.
Agyeiwaa’s throat felt like a demon was sitting on it, choking her to death. She kept gasping for air, her eyes wildly looking for help. Her husband was holding her, uselessly crying as usual, doing nothing. She was trying desperately looking for some way to communicate that he should do something, anything, when she realised his mouth was not twisted in grief. He was grinning.

What was…Why? 

The shock took out what little air was left in her. She tried to squirm out his grasp, but he held her firmly, looking to the rest of the world like he was protecting her.

She’d assumed one of her bridesmaids had ordered the food for her yesterday, so she’d taken just a little so she wouldn’t be bloated in her dress.

Him?

It wasn’t possible; Sekou did not have the balls.

But she looked into his eyes and saw the truth. She used the last of her strength to try and shout at him, but her throat would not oblige her. Darkness overcame her.
Sekou held her till the shudders and squirms stopped, and watched her lips struggle to mouth, “Coward!” before the lights went out of her terrified eyes. Her entire face was inflated. She looked horrifying, and the contrast to how beautiful she’d looked earlier almost amused him. 
Yes, he was a coward, but this was the bravest he’d ever been, so he didn’t mind. Everyone was on their feet, most of them just looking confused at how quickly things had progressed. He slowly shook his head. “She’s gone. I think..I think she was poisoned. What did she eat? Oh my God,” his face crumpled.                                             The hall erupted in noise; everyone scrambled to get out or get to the body, shouting, wailing. He processed all of this apathetically, the weight of the body straining on him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her mother faint back unto the pews. He gently lowered her to the floor, shutting her eyelids. He remained there in a squat, his mind ringing with a cyclone of thoughts. It all slowly quieted to one. 

 She’s gone.

 He wanted to break into dance.

ON THE CONCEPT OF BROKEN HEARTS

 

 At night I watch the moths                                They fly round and round my lightbulb          Till their wings die                                they think it’s the moon 

Cosmopolis

​I’m sitting at the back of a car, parked by the sidewalk, and life is bustling around me. People are in a real hurry. It’s 9, and I’m guessing most of them are late for something. Morgan is very uncomfortable at the front seat; I can tell by how he’s constantly fidgeting this way and that. He would’ve turned and asked me when we were leaving a long time ago, but I haven’t encouraged a cordial relationship. I would be uncomfortable too, parked right in the middle of such a dominantly (poor, violent) black neighborhood in a white limousine. Death wishes don’t come any clearer than that. I initially got Morgan as a sort of joke, you know, a black man from the ghetto with a white driver who’d try to act black to please me and all that. After a while I got bored of the routine, but I kept him anyway because I sensed that it pissed off my white business partners that my driver was white, and really, why lose an opportunity to amuse yourself?
I park here, sometimes, and just sit and stare at people rushing by. I don’t see anybody rushing anywhere, where I am now. Everybody moves like they know what exactly their next move in life is. Office. Meeting. Limo. Home. Bed. Limo. Bar, probably. And so on. Which is mostly true. It’s also mostly true that they couldn’t rush even if they had to, with their excess weight hanging off their torsos. Excess. It’s the first thing you have to get used to with money. The hardest, too, in my experience. To go from not having enough to having to dump things because you can’t keep them, well.

Right now there’s a boy,about 19, shuffling by, hands deep in pocket, eyes swinging this way and that like he’s waiting for something. Twenty short years ago, I was him, the boy walking quickly towards the traffic lights. If there’s any similarity between us, he’s probably not going anywhere, just really hungry and looking for something, anything, really to do. Nothing legal; that word is a joke around here. The boy’s eyes dart quickly from side to side, then he crosses the road. I really hope he’s as similar to me as I think. I was focused, determined, but that’s in abundance all around here, regardless of anything the media will tell you. We’re not all lazy cocaine addicts waiting for our next opportunity to get food in jail. But I was talented with numbers.  Could run numbers, play with numbers, predict numbers. I fought my way on out of here, found me a gig at the stock market, and the rest is math. 

Still, I appreciate this place. I don’t have that distant disdain most people who have struggled out of a place have for it. I’m not fond enough of the place to go around giving out money and advice, but I pass around occasionally and hope some radical change has started taking place. Pretty stupid, pretty selfish, maybe. But I’m no philanthropist. The place may not disgust me, but it’s left its mark pretty well. Just yesterday, I was with my therapist( Mandatory for every worker at the firm, for “workplace stress.” First time I went to see him I spent half the time laughing. It just seems like such a white thing to do, another product of life in excess. I actually like the guy half the time.) and he asked me about the challenges I’d faced as a youth in a dispassionate voice, with his hands steepled under his chin, looking into my eyes like they must’ve taught them in psych school or wherever. I stared at him, and for a second I almost told him I despised him for having had the opportunity to become moderately successful without it being an anomaly, without it being such a superhuman effort that it basically consumed your entire life and left all this residual bitterness and an inability to enjoy what you had except with this righteous I  earned it! sort of anger, and this faint aftertaste that what you had wasn’t really yours, that someone would come along for it. Wasn’t the point of all this money that you became happy? Wasn’t this sort of stress for poor people?                                                             But I smirked and told him it’d been real dandy, imitating some movie star I don’t remember.  

I’m almost done with the bottle beside me. I could tell Morgan to leave now, and I probably have better things to do, but it’s fun watching the man squirm in the front seat. What does he think, someone is going to jump through the half rolled window and attack him? It’s possible, though. Very. I’ll give him a few minutes more, then I’ll leave. Stretch this too much and he might quit, and where else would I find a white malleable driver? I laugh a bit at this, and he looks in the rear mirror.                                       “Anything the matter, sir?” I shake my head and continue looking out. The crowd of rushing people is thinned out now. Did they get to wherever they were rushing  to, I wonder?