If it wasn’t so sad it would have been funny. Both men had circled each other around the coffin that first visit a week ago. As though the man wanted to touch the undertaker and as though the undertaker didn’t want to be touched. But watching their eyes you knew they were doing something different. They both stared at the figure in the open coffin. Only God knew what was going on in the man’s mind but on the undertaker’s was how beautiful she looked in repose. How her fair complexion made her look pale in death and not grey like . . . How much she reminded him of . . .

  I ran through the bush. I ran till I felt my heart burst inside my chest. And I ran some more. My torn wrapper felt wet beneath the white shirt. Branches - canes and flogging sticks not yet plucked from the mangrove saplings - left bright wheals on my face and my arms, slapping me as I ran away from him. My blood formed a dark stain that spread from between my legs, through the wrapper and unto the outside of the shirt. This shirt, a gift from my new husband. My prince, Rafayel. The one you chose for me, Papa...

I wrote a genre novel. Something even I thought odd: an Alternate History. Of Nigeria. Alternate history is a subgenre of the science fiction and fantasy genre. When I first pitched the idea to publishers in Nigeria, I wasn’t laughed at. No. What I got were those looks of, “Eiyah, this one don crase o. Naija no dey carry last!”  And then they would ask me what my ‘alternate history’ would be about...

Sliding over chairs ever closer to the glass windows, I slowly let go. Somehow I did not care anymore if I got the visa or not. I was exhausted. I was hungry.  Everything seemed bigger. Who was I kidding? Of course I wanted to go to America, very badly in fact...