By Nasta Martyn

Nasta Martyn is an artist, graphic artist, illustrator, poet, and writer. She graduated from the Academy of Slavic Cultures and has a bachelor's degree in design. She is currently pursuing a master's degree in art history. In 2005, she created a series of graphics dedicated to the Chernobyl disaster, and in the same year, she wrote the series "The Red Book." In 2022, she participated in international exhibitions in China, Taiwan, and the United States. In 2024, she received the Jury's Special Prize for her poster in China

By Aerin Ahn

Aerin Ahn lives in Irvine, California, where she spends her days writing, sleeping, and falling into rabbit holes of information. She is a California Arts Scholar and is currently studying creative writing at the Orange County School of the Arts. Her work has received recognition from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, as well as the John Locke Global Essay Competition.

I left my fingernails half inserted into your flesh,

a weed digging its roots deep into the soil god has not granted it. 

The sunlight glinted off my eyelashes like 

glitter on the sea, and I closed my eyes to your pain, 

the sheer layer of skin between the world and my eyes turning everything orange. 

Gunshots, and then–spider lilies blooming in the 

uninhabitable landscape I call my skin, because even I cannot live in it. 

When it is finally dark, I see visions of falling and bleeding, 

blackberry staining my lips like a dead lover's kiss. 

I remember you pressing the fruit against my teeth,

calling it love, begging for entry, but my mouth 

has always opened when it shouldn’t and never opened when it should. 

I wanted to be everything for you, but I can’t even be something for myself. 

The dream is dissipating and 

I am dancing with the wisps that are left behind.

Darkness is never just darkness, 

I wonder what it's like to be blind, deaf, 

and some other horrifying thing. I do not lack sight or hearing but 

instead something you will never be able to provide. 

A million stars blink in the sky, 

they are my past reincarnations winking at you, but you 

chalked it up to aliens and I won’t disagree.

I called you in the phone booth with the last quarter in my wallet, 

it went to voicemail and I listened to your voice drone on and on,

wishing you could be as accommodating in reality as you are in the 

yellow glow of streetlights. 

Someone takes out a tissue box and starts crooning at me. 

Drops of water dot my fists that tighten until 

crescent moons are dug into my skin, until blood smears my palms 

and I can pretend that I am capable of violence. 

We’re at the end of the world and you’re talking about sunspots and 

red string theory and I have no idea what you’re saying—but the brutality 

of your words is one I can listen to like a lullaby, one that 

I would be fine dying to in my sleep. 

 At 3am I am still awake,  wishing the moon would eclipse itself 

and I could set the air conditioner to zero. Scenarios of past lives 

and conversations that I never had flash in my eyes 

and they are all I can think about, like a 

shark that has caught the scent of their own blood. 

Dawn creeps in from the window and presses its 

hands onto my chest. Cold water splashes onto my face, it 

drips down my neck like quicksilver because Midas

has cursed me with his touch, yet I could never be worthy of gold. 

I want to throw up as I brush my teeth. It’s so disgusting in here 

and I can feel the toothpaste sliding down my throat. 

Cleansing myself should feel clean but instead it feels like shoving 

two fingers down my throat. 

Someone whispers

“why is it so quiet in here?” before they are all consumed by

a black hole. I remain because matter makes up everything but I am 

the hole in your body you are always trying 

to fill.

By Anne Hendricks

Anne Hendricks is a poet and writer in Northern Mississippi. She looks for eternal truths and beauty in her daily life!

The light is thin and silvered, a quiet, muted thing,

 With none of autumn’s burning or the urgency of spring. 

The grey days of January settle low against the hill, 

Where the world has held its breath and the pulse of earth is still.

There is a hollow beauty in the sky’s unshifting lead, 

A canvas for the weary and the words we haven't said. 

No shadows stretch across the fields, no golden hours glow, 

Just the soft, persistent hum of life waiting deep below.

We tuck our spirits inward, like the roots beneath the mud, 

While the slow and steady winter rhythm settles in the blood. 

It is a time for hushing, for the wisdom of the fog, 

For the moss that creeps in silence o'er the sodden, fallen log.

Though the color may be absent, there is clarity in grey

A chance to see the architecture of a shorter day. 

Before the world begins to bloom and clamor for our sight, 

We find our peace in monochrome, and rest within the white.

By Sarah Ismail

The Descent

Oh, no have I fallen into the

ones I despise the most 

The vitriol and apathy

Those who were already there when I came

Those who I cannot seem to exile

Yet my constant need for notice

My constant need for clarity for 

 care, help, for solace, the basics 

Oh, no have I been swallowed 

By the insults and ignorance 

So much I wouldn’t even be able to tell between

compliments and insults 

Which is which I ask myself

The days still counting 

I ask the void again 

Which is which

Because it cannot be

That their intent is so stark 

That a line draws itself 

To a point where i cannot repel the malice

 I cannot fight the mean 

The loved ones, the ones 

who’s image looks so normal 

Mine looks delusional 

Oh, no I see now 

It’s no question 

I have fallen 

Oh, no 

I can’t get up now can I 

I can’t get up

Oh, no

By Renata Nicas Ngogo 

Renata Ngogo is a medical student who is highly moved by the art of language breeding to poetry.

She writes under the pen name misspoet.001 and writes on themes of love, pain, survival and general life experiences. She blends her career and talent to bring forth healing of both body and soul.

PAINFUL PEACE

A sleeping poet awakens,

In the midst of calmness,

With new songs of tears,

For it is this peace she fears.

For seasons in, seasons out,

She found comfort in chaos;

Now that silence settles,

She unlocks a new fear.

She smiles through pain,

And laughs into tears,

Was this new peace a joke,

Or merely disbelief?

Pouches of wine taste different,

Too sweet to stay sober,

Or maybe it is the lack of war

That finds her sleeping drunk.

In this fifth night of peace,

She sips from the enemy’s skull,

Yet with unanswered questions

Will peace ever come to a halt?

Her tear blesses the land

As it settles into the ground,

For this tunnel of light she walks

Opens to a dark, unending fight.

By Ibrar Sami

Ibrar Sami is primarily an urban poet— one who discovers the rhythm of

humanity even within the heart of concrete.

His poems breathe through smoky skies, the noise of traffic jams, the

nicotine-scented air, the stench of slums,

the loneliness of rooftops, and the half-lit evenings where silent faces hide behind

shadows.

He knows that beneath the dazzling lights of the city lies a profound darkness —

where countless souls quietly vanish into themselves,

lost in an endless field of alienation. In his vision, the city is not merely a backdrop

but a living being — it bleeds, laughs, dreams, and mourns.

In the garbage heaps of urban despair, he finds forgotten lives, where each day

gives birth to new hopelessness, new resistance.

For him, the city, like a village, is alive — pulsating with emotions, love and

separation, solitude and desire.

Thus, his pen does not merely observe the city — it becomes the city itself: living,

speaking, and loving through its endless hum of existence.

Poems Collection

Shadow of the Dark Tunnel

When the festival flared,

my eyes turned to the restless road—

an old house stood there,

clad in stone, brick, and iron,

as though a pale green scar

had cut across the silence of the street.

I am not one to linger

where the stench of alleys clings.

Yet in the last unraveling light,

a sudden gust struck me,

drenching my ribs with weary sweat.

With no choice left,

I walked on.

At the edge of a narrow lane—

the sky lay heavy in sleep,

a fierce river raced behind me,

its breaking banks

echoing in my ears.

I leaned close, listening:

within a hollow cavern

something struggled in silence.

Pressed by haste,

on the border of neglect,

I waited beneath a naked sky

until a tunnel of darkness

opened before me.

There I glimpsed

the shadow of another world—

a place without division,

where only the wind of unending joy

moved without pause.

Then a light appeared—

but was it a door,

or only a mirage?

The tunnel shuddered;

I heard a whisper:

“No end. No beginning.”

I stood still,

yet footsteps went on—

from where, who can tell?

The Deathsong of Waiting

This is no mere restlessness, beloved—

it is the silent hemorrhage of a heart.

In reasons, and in the absence of reason,

my helpless, delirious mind

wanders through its own dissonant murmurs.

You once whispered—

“Someday, my time will come as well.”

Clinging to the roots of that promise,

I stood within the sorrow of waiting,

and in solitude, drew my violin’s bow

across the hidden strings of your heart—

its lament carried away

by the loneliest of winds.

But when your time at last arrived,

the fallen leaves had long since perished;

winter’s unforgiving chill had taken hold.

The fragile morning sun had flung

a single cry across the courtyard,

then vanished into silence,

leaving behind only

the endless erosion of a distant passage.

And I—

I stood beneath that consuming fire,

burning myself into cinders,

like a true lover cloaked in unrest,

summoning toward me a reckless, vacant time.

As though within every breath I take

there tolls the death song 

of a broken promise.

The Tale of Resentment

And then, we met once more—

your eyes were like a drenched forest,

each leaf concealing

a secret shade of sorrow.

Within my chest

longing trembled

like waves torn by moonlight.

In the circle of gain and loss

you lit the lamps of reproach—

flickering, fading,

yet scattering the glow of grievance.

“Can we not

think as we once did?”—

your voice fell

like raindrops tapping

against a windowpane.

Down the mountain’s edge

a solitary waterfall descended,

its clear stream carrying

the unhealed cries of stone.

In its rumbling echo I heard—

a river of tears

imprisoned in the heart of rock.

Those tears spilled forth

into a quiet river,

whose murmuring currents sang

the hidden grammar of resentment.

But in time, the tranquil river

rushed restlessly toward the sea—

seeking peace, seeking refuge.

Yet the sea was weary then—

its heaving chest laden

with waves of burning grief,

each surge breaking apart

in invisible moans of pain.

The wind scattered that weeping

across the sky,

stars fell like droplets

of trembling tears.

And still, drifting upon the current,

remained the blue history

of our love and our wounded pride.

By Fatemeh Mahya Ansarian 

Fatemeh Mahya Ansarian is a 19-year-old medical student with a passion for learning and self-discovery. She enjoys immersing herself in a wide range of books, which fuels her curiosity and broadens her understanding of the world. In her free time, she often spends moments lost in thought, reflecting on ideas and exploring new perspectives. Driven by a genuine desire to make a positive impact in the future, she remains dedicated to her studies and personal growth.

“Honoring Fatimah al-Zahra’s (S.A.) Virtues” is a reverent tribute to Hazrat Fatimah al-Zahra (S.A.), the beloved daughter of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). It highlights her purity, wisdom, patience, and spiritual excellence, portraying her as the epitome of virtue and divine beauty. The poem laments her suffering, martyrdom, and the hardships endured by her and her children, expressing deep longing and love for her. Through vivid imagery and emotional verses, it emphasizes her unique spiritual status, her unwavering faith, and the profound connection between her life and divine truth. Ultimately, it conveys the poet's yearning to be close to her, seeking solace and mercy through love and devotion to Fatimah al-Zahra (S.A.)."

Where is that pure soul?

Where is that perfect human being?

Where is the perfect human?

Where is that wise and guided woman?

Where is the one whom no one can attain in knowledge?

Where is the one whose anger is Allah's anger?

Where is the one whose satisfaction is Allah's satisfaction?

Where is the one who raised the best children?

Where is the one who stood so long in prayer that her feet became swollen?

Where is that martyred woman?

O embodiment of Allah's beauty,

O manifestation of Allah's light,

O expression of Allah's devotion,

O truthful one,

O patient one,

O righteous one,

O chaste,

O pious,

O veiled,

O kind,

O best of women,

O one who emerged triumphant from every trial.

Why, when you were pregnant, was your child martyred?

Who hurt you?

Why were your children orphaned in childhood?

Why were you buried in the night?

Why do you have no shrine to fly to like a pigeon?

I wish I could shed tears equal in number to the drops of rain for your suffering.

Distance cries out between us,

The world has become dark and gloomy for me.

The domain of my being is a desert,

Thirsting for the water whose source is your very existence.

My soul is imprisoned within my body; otherwise, I would have gifted it to you.

I am a child whose life has become hard away from her mother,

Longing to come into your embrace and rest her head upon your chest.

The silence of my sorrow,

The tears of my spirit,

Bear witness to my yearning for the journey,

Though my load is not yet packed.

The words in the universe testify

To the desire of my heart.

I wish to become lost, so that you may find me.

My hope is in the mercy of the Lord and in my love for you—

My love for my mother,

Lady Fatimah al-Zahra (peace be upon her).

By Izuchukwu Onyedibiemma Udokwu

Izuchukwu Udokwu is a Nigerian storyteller whose work has appeared on Kalahari Review, Afreada, LOLWE, and others. He was shortlisted for the 2020 K & L Prize. His shortlisted story was published in an anthology of speculative fiction on Africanfuturism, Black Skin No Mask. 

The Silence of Fireflies

The thing about predatory fireflies is that they perform the glow patterns of some other species to snare and prey on them – a deceit made possible by their sheer gift of light. 

“Like gods,” the tour guide said to Uzoamaka and Ikem, as they stood in a dark room of a conservation center and watched the brilliantly light-emitting things fly around inside a large, enclosed glass. They thought them beautiful. The green vegetation in the glass looked darker, as though the light-giving creatures bloomed out of them. It is in the presence of darkness that fireflies burn bright. But you do not think of darkness during honeymoon. You think of a thing with light flying towards you, of endless possibilities made viable by what binds you both together. 

Being pregnant for the first time sprung in Uzoamaka an assertion that was alive, like the poise of a tree with deep roots. The day she received the result, Ikem pushed the center table of the living room to the wall, took her hand and led her to the empty space. He held her on her belly and they both swung their waists to Chike’s Roju. A few times, they sang along to the parts they knew well. Five days later, they woke up to blood on the bed sheet and on the duvet and on Uzoamaka’s thistle purple nightgown. Ikem drove her to the hospital. The soon-to-be baby had decamped. The doctor asked her if she would prefer a medication that would help expel the remaining tissue or if she would prefer for the tissue to pass out of her naturally. She stood up from the bed she was on and walked out of the room. “She needs all the emotional support she can get now,” the doctor said to Ikem, whose face crumbled in absolute despair. He didn’t know how to contain another’s pain when the weight of his was the size of a malignant tumor pressing against all parts of him. 

***

When Uzoamaka’s grandfather was still alive, she was a fine abrasive with which he polished his pride. He was the first professor from their community, and so, every Christmas, their village house welcomed tubers of yam and several live chickens from people. Some came because they wanted him to enlist their children’s name into the student slots he had for admission. Some came because they were grateful for the help he gave them. One time, some students came with tubers of yam and two chickens and a carton of wine. And after they left, he told Uzoamaka, in what seemed like a whisper, that they had come to bribe him in masks of appreciation. Her parents had sent her to live with her grandfather after her grandmother passed away. She helped him wash his clothes and draw water from the well half a kilometer away from the compound. She cooked, too. She sat with him every night and listened to him tell stories of places and people and himself. There was something in his voice that often made her cry. There was a ritual they both often performed at the beginning of each story. 

There is a story that I will tell you, he would say. 

Tell me so that my heart will be glad, she would reply. And then he would begin. 

There was a woman who got married to a rich man. She began to treat every other person like they meant nothing. She maltreated a child she took from a mother with the promise of sending her to school. She instead sent her hawking oranges and sachet water on the streets, even though she did not need the money. The money did not mean anything to her. Her husband bought her the most expensive cars, and she shopped in the most expensive supermarkets. She starved this child. She whipped her with wire and sometimes with a coat hanger. The child cursed her that she would never have a child of her own. She never did. After some years, her husband married another wife and sent her out of the house. My daughter, it takes nothing to be kind to people. 

***

After she lost her third pregnancy, Uzoamaka wondered if she had done something wrong, if someone had cursed her. She began frequenting church services. When the church building was empty, she knelt in front of the altar. She bowed her head. She stared at the vinyl tiles. They made her head spin. So, she looked up to the high ceiling that stretched as though in hope of being closer to God. She wondered how the builders did it, stretched so far up, and then, she reminded herself that there was nothing impossible, that there was nothing impossible for God to do. On a video call with her siblings earlier that week, her eldest sister told her that she needed to seek the face of God. “These miscarriages are not ordinary. I can feel it in my spirit,” she said. Uzoamaka felt shame. She was the unreligious one. She was the one now taking all the advice she could possibly get. She was the one listening to her sister, diffidently, about the wonders God was doing through some men of God she had called theatrical. She closed her eyes, and in that moment, she felt as though she was seeing past the ceiling and the roof and the soft clouds that billowed above the vast emptiness. 

It seemed like there was a fragile, thin line, between ecstasy – the little things of going to a bar, doing karaoke, getting drunk together, holding each other’s hand in the back seat of an Uber as though afraid of letting go would mean disappearance – and deep darkness, and with the loss of the third pregnancy, the cross over was easy, and that was when Ikem knew that when things begin to fall apart, it is always hard to hold on, to pull everything together, to retain the moisture of a detached leaf. And he tried. Every weekend when he was not working, he took Uzoamaka to places he thought could let light into her – the overpriced restaurants in Lagos, where aesthetics was more important than the taste of the food, a tea place in Abuja that served delicious Arabian teas, Yankari Game Reserve, where the water was turquoise blue, as if it made an extra effort in taking in the greenness of the trees to its blueness – and even though they held hands, played with monkeys, laughter burgeoning from the depth of her stomach, it often was momentary, because they went back home the way they came. Her smiles were never the same, as though something held them from reaching her eyes. But those moments of little joys, gave Ikem a chance to breathe, a hope that the redemption of bridled things came to those who try.

***

Every evening after Uzoamaka returned to Abba, her mother’s hometown, to spend Christmas with her maternal cousins and uncles and aunts, and her little nieces and nephews who ran around the compound like little sewage rats, she would take a walk around the village with her cousin, Edu. They were both born on the same day. Edu was older by 304 minutes. They were both placed in the same bed. The doctor mentioned something about the distress Uzoamaka was going through after birth due to the sudden change from the womb to the open. Lying next to Edu was for warmth and a soft, familiar smell. It made her stop crying and reduced her fussiness. Uzoamaka’s mother in turn breastfed Edu because his mother’s breast milk refused to flow. The nurses and doctor took turns massaging her breasts and applying a warm compress to stimulate the flow until her breasts started to throb and hurt. Uzoamaka and Edu grew up like a fabric woven by two different threads of the same texture. They laughed alike – loud and unrehearsed – and slapped whoever sat close to them on the shoulder while their shoulders heaved due to laughter. They both liked men who were intelligent and naïve. Uzoamaka once teased him that they both had the same taste in men because he had sucked her mother’s breast that was made for her. But it was the comfort in seeing each other, in really seeing each other that made a fine, tailored finishing out of them. 

***

“Ụlọ nwere nwa adịghị efu,” Uzoamaka’s mother-in-law said to her. A home with a child is never lost. They were at the balcony. They watched people walk past each other, some stopped to greet or hug other people. Her mother-in-law had just finished telling her a story about a woman they both knew, and how the woman’s husband returned her bride price and said that he was no longer interested because the woman hadn’t been able to get pregnant after five years of marriage; and eight months later, the man was a father with his new wife. She had felt like she was being reminded that she had stayed for five years and had lost six pregnancies.

Ikem appeared from his bedroom. He had heard his mother. Uzoamaka felt relieved by his presence, how it quieted her mother-in-law, how her husband’s eyes wore a coldness so judgmental that her mother-in-law averted her eyes from her son to the street. “Uzo m, please come and help me apply this cream on my back,” he said. “My Uzo” was what he called her all the time. It always made her smile, always did something in the world of her being, a hush over her storm. Uzo m. My way. A personalization. A belonging. And in that moment between standing up and joining her husband, her mother-in-law said in a low voice that wasn’t a whisper, as though she wanted her son to hear as well, “you should not relax as if another woman cannot come and unseat you.” 

***

It was during one of those walks with Edu that she first saw Ikem. She ate udara while they walked. Edu thought it slipped from her hand, but it was seeing Ikem that made her drop it. She wiped her mouth with the back of her palm. It didn’t bother her when the children playing football on the bare dusty field with torn faded nets on the goalposts nearly hit her with a ball. It was not in her nature to be flushed by a man in such a manner. She watched Ikem sitting on a pavement close to Major Road. Edu said to her in a whisper that he looked like a homeless boy, the way he sat there eating coconut. His hair was not combed. His feet were ashy. Later, she realized that he was waiting for his mother who had called for him to come and help her carry some of the things she had bought in the market. And before then, he was roasting ji ona, a local yam that was short and soft and yellow on the inside. 

Uzoamaka was not sure what it was about him that caused something to flutter in her belly. He was not the type of man she whispered with Edu about while they walked aimlessly around the village till the sun set or till one of them got weak in the feet. Ikem didn’t have the rounded butt she liked on men. She liked to have something to hold on to while the man thrust. He was the same height as her. She liked men taller than her. He had no sideburns. But he had tiny, sad eyes. So, maybe it was the eyes or maybe it was the way he smiled onto his phone while he sat on that pavement. Their eyes met. He smiled. No one ever saw what looked like home and chose the wild. But her past experiences had shown her that to make any human being a home was to be without a roof over the heart. You are your own home, her mother told her.

***

Her father was her mother’s home. They went to stage plays together, sat together, held hands all through. They held hands, too, when they strolled every evening and smiled when they spontaneously looked at each other at the same time. And kissed. Sometimes, when they were in bed, he read to her a poem he’d written because she was the thing that occupied his head – her gentle smile, her kind eyes, the way her eyes were the truest things he ever saw whenever she said, “I love you.” She thought that when the children came, that things he did were going to change. They didn’t. He wanted her in the present the same way he wanted her in the past. Children kept coming like the proof of what love yielded, as though they were evidence that what they shared was alive because it produced something living. But when he lost his job and began to drink, Iferika lost her balance in his life

Love: a thing that flickers in your belly, relaxes you, fills you up with tender light, and then splits you with all the strength of its essentiality into bright distorted fragments. Or maybe it is desire.

***

Because of what she was told, Uzoamaka joined the children’s department in the church. She smiled at them so much that her cheeks hurt, and she had to rub the heel of her palm on her face to ease the tension. It surprised her how she enjoyed being with these little things that chirped like well-fed birds. They were loud and joyful, a burst of uninhibited delight. The very little ones didn’t let her carry them at first. They cried and stretched forth their hands to Abundance, one of the women who took care of the children while their parents sat in the big hall listening to the pastor’s sermon, unbothered by the miniature chaos they brought to church. 

She didn’t like carrying kids who were not related to her. There was this fear that settled in her about kids owned by strangers. She didn’t want to carry a child who would cry in her arms, and then their mother would look at her like she had done something to the child or that the child had rejected her because she was evil. They said that children could sense things, and so her fear was that they would sense something in her that she didn’t know, which would make them cry, and then it would leave her worried for days why the child had rejected her. Now, she preferred to carry kids that belonged to her friends or were related by blood, because in that way, she was free from the judgmental eyes of their mothers and the self-deprecating guilt she felt afterwards. Her friend who had two children told her that when getting pregnant was hard for her, she spent a lot of time with children, played with them, bought snacks and sweets for them, and they opened her womb for children to start coming. Uzoamaka wanted to tell her that it felt like using the kids. She didn’t. She wanted to tell her that hers was different. Uzoamaka’s womb was open. Children formed in her. Or tried to form in her. They just didn’t know how to stay. She didn’t know how to make them stay. Her body rejected them, or they rejected her body. She became a woman who couldn’t hold a baby, who watched her unformed babies run down her thighs in a crimson liquid. How could these kids that surrounded her be the very hands that would hold her babies? 

***

Edu visited after she miscarried for the seventh time. Ikem called him to come. Uzoamaka refused to eat or get out of bed. She was in the pants she wore when she lost her pregnancy. The once bright red blood stains on her had turned dark red by the time Edu arrived. The room lightly stank of something unwashed and enclosed, that even the open windows couldn’t take out, as though the dark of the room held it still. She hadn’t had a bath in almost three days. Ikem tried to talk her out of it, coiled himself beside her, wrapped his arm around her. She just stared at him as though she couldn’t hear what he was saying. She did not cry. She did not flinch. When her eyes were open, she stared into nothingness. It was a rare kind of gloom that walked into their home – lurid and quiet and brooding – and it was threatening to swallow him up whole, too. So, he let silence sit in-between them until he couldn’t.

Her eyes opened when Edu entered. She knew the familiar smell. Edu sat beside her in bed. She closed her eyes again. Tears slid down the side of her face that rested on the pillow. Ikem stood at the door, resting his shoulder on the door frame. 

“Uzoo,” Edu called. He rubbed her hand, as though warming up the coldness that left her numb to everything. “I am here,” he said, almost a whisper. 

She started to cry. Her body shook. It was the first time she had cried after the miscarriage. She didn’t turn to face Edu or move from the spot where she lay. Her entire body just shook. Because Ikem didn’t want them to see that tears filled up his eyes and were about to cascade, he left the door to the sitting room. Edu held her. He turned her to face him. He pulled her up and hugged her. She cried more. He rubbed her back. His eyes watered. The back of his head ached because he held back every agony he felt in that moment. It was as though he absorbed everything Uzoamaka was feeling, as though her loss became his. He pulled her up while they still hugged. Her legs were weak. She could not stand. And when Edu lifted her onto his hands, he felt her frailty, but also the weight of her grief from loss, past and present. He took her into the bathroom and peeled her blood crusted clothes off her body. She sat in the bathtub. He turned on the faucet and watched the water fall on her in multiple fast droplets. Grief is a thing with cold wings and fully fledged numbness.

***

People often looked at her with gentle pity. She knew. Childlessness had quietened her, made her softer, less alive. Uzoamaka went to the market to get food stuff in preparation for her mother’s visit. She watched as the catfish inside a large stainless basin of water slithered in a circular motion. With a black paint was written ‘Madam Point and Kill’ on an old piece of plywood which dangled from the wood that held the rusted zinc of the kiosk. She weighed the fishes with her eyes. The fish seller gossiped with her neighbor who was also a fish seller. She looked at Uzoamaka frequently. “Madam, they’re fresh, and they are gotten from the river not the ponds, so they won’t be slimy,” the fish seller said. Uzoamaka pointed at the one she had her eyes on. The fish seller took aim at the chosen fish and hit it in the middle of the head with a cane machete. It became still. The others scampered. Blood dripped down from where it was hit. Uzoamaka averted her gaze. The fish seller cut it based on Uzoamaka’s description and tied it up in a nylon bag. 

“Is that not the witch they say keeps eating her children?” the other fish seller said to her neighbor in what she thought was a whisper. Uzoamaka was already leaving. She heard her.

In the evening, when she sat with her husband, Ikem, at the balcony, listening to him talk about how a colleague was fired because an embezzlement was uncovered by the external auditors and he was found guilty, and how certain he was the man didn’t work alone, that he was just the fall guy.

“The fish seller called me a witch today,” Uzoamaka said, cutting his story short.

Ikem fell silent. The little smile that hung on his lips collapsed. He didn’t know what to say to her to make her feel better, to make her forget. It had always been a thing with him – his inability to weave a feeling into words in the midst of loss or sadness or both. He started bopping his leg. Uzoamaka placed her hand on his leg. She knew what it was that often unsteadied her husband’s legs. It was in repudiating his anger that his legs learned unstillness, a way of containment that sometimes wasn’t containment but a volcano – a thing building up its brute force before exploding. 

He placed his hand on top of Uzomaka’s. His hand, too, tremored. 

Grief and anger are two tremoring beasts.

***

It was her mother who first looked at her and told her that she was pregnant when she arrived. Uzoamaka pretended not to have heard her mother, because engaging her came with questions she had no willpower to answer. Iferika, Uzoamaka’s mother, had nine children. She had none, after almost six years of marriage to Ikem. She only smiled. Something in her felt incomprehensibly shattered. Smile was the thing she did when the man beside her on the plane to Abuja asked her how many children she had and went on to tell her how she ought to find a way to birth the next one in the UK or in the US. Smile was what she offered to the woman she had taken baby things to, and who hugged her and told her that God would give her her own children. It was the woman’s sixth child. She shared a bedroom with her husband and her six children. Afterwards, while Uzoamaka walked home, she wondered why God chose to give people, in multiples, the things they could not handle.

*** 

She attended her secondary school reunion. She didn’t want to attend. She had started avoiding attending events. Events exhausted her, made her feel alone. But her secondary school friend convinced her to attend, that they were going to have fun. She knew this old friend of hers wanted to attend because she wanted to see who was doing very well and who was still stuck with struggling, especially the girls who had made her feel less. She, Uzoamaka, mostly wanted to see Damian, her first boyfriend, her first heartbreak, not because she wanted to reconnect or because she missed him, but she wanted to see how his life had turned out. The boy who she thought was the young version of his father, evasive beings who exist for the sole purpose of soft-landing on you like snowflakes, but also with slow destructiveness of a supple burning paper that caught something else and raised down the joyous mountain folds of a person to nothing. He was off social media, so there was no way to watch his life in almost blurred photos. She had this theory that those who were off Facebook didn’t want people to see how degenerated their lives were or how successful their lives had become. What she didn’t expect was to meet him and to find out that he was successful, that he was married with three children, and that his wife who walked alongside him was as beautiful and elegantly dressed as a movie star – the bun of her hair perfectly aligned, her belly as flat as someone who had not birthed a child, which made the silhouette of her evening gown look like her second skin. She didn’t know how she found herself in the midst of her former schoolmates. They stood in a circle. Damian stood there, too, holding his wife’s hand. They were talking about their children, how mischievous they were, how Chekwube’s child pulled down structures in his house and laughed whenever things crashed to the ground. They all laughed and told him that the child was like him, and reminded him how destructive he was as a student; how Grace’s five year old child argued with her about everything, even what to eat, and she, too, was reminded that a child would either behave like the father or the mother and not like a wild animal, that her child was a miniature reflections of her hard-core-ness. Uzoamaka knew it would get to her, and just as she was about to leave a hole in the circle, someone called her name. 

“How many children do you have now?” It was Grace. 

“One,” Uzoamaka said, swallowing hard. 

Their eyes were all on her, waiting for more things to be said or questioning why she had lied to them. But their facial expressions were blank. “He is the sweetest,” she said. They all smiled and told her that she was lucky. Her legs felt balanced, lighter, so that she didn’t try to leave again, so that she smiled, too, even though it wore the burden of how easily it was for her to lie to fit in and to feel nothing like the weight of pity often placed on her whenever she said that she was without a child. The eyes that she noticed still bore on her were those of Damian. What was the truth he knew about her? Did he see through her performances? Did he see that her womb knew only how to let go?

***

Uzoamaka didn’t think she was pregnant. She had not seen her monthly flow, but it had happened to her too often before the miscarriages, a false alarm, a delay in her menstrual circle. “Are you sure you’re not pregnant?” Her mother asked her again. They were standing over the gray marble kitchen island with cottage drawer storage, peeling off the husk and silk of the corn on the table. The silk made Uzoamaka think of baby hair. She would have held the corn like a baby if her mother was not there, the way she did with Edu when they were eight, when they would wrap corn with a hand towel and smooth its silk backwards in the same vein that they had seen mothers do with their newborns. 

“I am not pregnant, Mama,” she said. But when they were done, and the corn was in the pot on the stove, she went inside her bathroom and let her urine splatter on the dipstick pregnancy test. She sat on the toilet seat and waited. She counted. A second faint pink line appeared. 

*** 

Eji m Ngozi nke Chukwu na agozi gi. Ị ga-amụ, ị ga-azụ. Ihe ọ bụla ị tinyere aka gị ga-aga nke ọma. Ndi iro gị agarọ afụ gị. Ọ bụrụ na ihe ọjọọ na-eme n'iru, ị ga-anọ n'azụ. Ọ bụrụ na ọ na-eme n'azụ, ị ga-anọ n'iru. Mana ewekwana ihe na-abụro nke gị. Aghọgbula ndị mmadụ. Nwee obi dị mma n'ebe mmadụ ịbe gi nọ. Ewenalu ndị ọzọ ekworo ma ọ bụ anyaụfụ. Ihe ọma gi ga-abịara gị.

“I am blessing you with the blessings of God. You will bear children, and you will raise them. Whatever you put your hand in will prosper. Your enemies will not see you. If an evil thing is happening at the front, you will be at the back. If it happens at the back, you will be at the front. But do not take what does not belong to you. Do not deceive people. Have a good heart towards your fellows. Do not be jealous or envious of others. Good things will come to you,” Uzoamaka’s grandfather said to her. She knelt before him, close to his bed. His hand was on her head while he spoke. It was the first time he had done that – asked her to bring water for him to wash his hand. She did. He washed his fingers, wriggling them meticulously inside the plastic bowl. He flapped his hands towards the tail of his bed. He wiped them finally on the wrapper around his waist that he knotted just below his belly button. And then, he asked her to drop the bowl of water and kneel before him – and for the first time he spoke at length without adding an English word or a blend of English and Igbo. It was as though he knew. Because he slept that night and didn’t wake up.

***

The last time she went for antenatal check-up, the baby was kicking quite fine, and the doctor said that its heartbeat was strong. Uzoamaka’s blood pressure was normal. Her pelvis and womb were healthy. Cells were collected from her cervix. There was no infection or cancer. When she went for another check-up a week later, the sonographer moved the transducer several times around her gelled bump, and the smile that usually sat on the sonographer’s face started to fade. Uzoamaka asked her if something was wrong. She did not respond but gave a smile that seemed like a mixture of concern and performative assurance. She pulled the doppler ultrasound on the other end of the room close to the imaging table where Uzoamaka lay. Uzoamaka watched her. She could not tell how old the woman was. She touched and moved things with a veteran articulateness. The sonographer steered the transducer of the new machine on her belly. 

*** 

When Uzoamaka entered her second trimester, she no longer woke up every morning to look at her bedsheet for bloodstain. She knew that it was going to stay. That she would name the baby Nkenodulum, the one who stayed for me. Ikem, the man he was, the man he had always been each time Uzoamaka got pregnant, did everything in the house. He did the cooking. The cleaning. The washing. The foot massaging. He didn’t allow her to do anything. He, in the hopefulness of each pregnancy, carried her like a thin glass ornament. But what she didn’t let him do was go to antenatal check-up with her. She liked the casual discussions she had with the other pregnant women. She liked their stories – of birthing, of how they know they carry a girl because they craved sweet food instead of salty food, of how chewing raw ginger or boiling pumpkin leaves can help reduce swollen feet. She also liked when they exchanged pictures of how they looked before pregnancy, and laugh at themselves, at what pregnancy had done to them, bloated them, thinned them, altered their skin, upturned their emotions.

***

Uzoamaka watched the sonographer push the doppler ultrasound to its former position. The sonographer smiled. Uzoamaka took a deep breath. She didn’t realize she was holding her breath. “Let me get the doctor,” the sonographer said. 

Four days after the ultrasound, she walked into the baby’s room, straight to where the rocking cradle sat. She smiled. She gently touched the wooden cradle so that it swayed from side to side. Her and Ikem had decorated the room two months before the baby’s delivery date. They knew it was a girl. The room wasn’t painted pink like some of their friends did when they expected a girl. The room was turquoise, like a warm under sea color, especially when the sun tore through its windows. She smoothed the baby’s wearable blanket. She stood there for a while. There was a certain sort of peace in the room, light, like a feather. She breathed in and wondered why her baby slept so much. She looked at her breasts and noticed that the yellow polo she wore was already daubed with breast milk. She left the room to get her breast pump. 

Her mother was in the kitchen when she entered. She was cooking. She looked at Uzoamaka and asked, “Is everything alright, eh nne m?” Uzoamaka told her that she was fine, that she had come for the breast pump, and that the baby was still sleeping, so she would fill the breast pump for when the baby was awake. “You need to rest,” Iferika told her. 

That night, after they had dinner and went to bed, Uzoamaka woke up in the middle of the night, screaming. “My child, my baby.” And then she stood up and ran to the baby’s bedroom, Ikem followed her. Her mother woke up, too, and with great effort, due to the arthritis in her knees, he stood up and walked to the baby’s room. She met Ikem standing by the door. She stood with him. Both watched Uzoamaka. She was feeding a brown fluffy teddy bear the breast milk from the breast pump. The teddy bear was drenched, the floor wet with yellow liquid. It dripped from the thing she cupped in her hand, as though she was carrying something as fragile as glassware.

***

The doctor walked in with the sonographer. The sonographer applied more gel on her belly and then moved the transducer in a circular motion. Uzoamaka just watched. The smile that appeared on her face before the sonographer left the room disappeared. The doctor placed the stethoscope on her belly. He shook his head. “Doctor, what is wrong?” Uzoamaka asked. Tears began to gather in her eyes. “We can’t find a heartbeat,” doctor said. Her eyes just fixated on him, while he rubbed his forehead. She followed his eyes that looked the sonographer. The sonographer avoided her eyes, Uzoamaka noticed. She looked everywhere else – the marbled floor, the doppler ultrasound beside the bed, the pearlescent white of the ceiling, as though searching for the fluorescent light with the buzzing sound – but not Uzoamaka. 

Uzoamaka steadied her eyes on the sonographer for a brief time, willing her to look at her. She had no idea how she was feeling hot and cold all at once, how it felt as if her bones and ribs were tremulous.  When the sonographer’s eyes finally fell from the ceiling to Uzoamaka, it looked as though she was going to cry. It was true, she realized. They were not pulling her leg. My home is lost, she thought. She was never going to root her feet in her home. It was the first pregnancy that had stayed. She was nearing the due date. Her baby’s heartbeat was strong last week. What stopped it suddenly? There was no possibility of it. She had done everything. The shrunken flesh of her knees was a testament to how much she had prayed, her hands to how much she lifted them in gratitude. It was her eighth pregnancy, the one that stayed, the one that was supposed to mean something, the one that was supposed to be a representation of new beginnings. Was God taunting her? Was it all a performance? The prey and the firefly. God, she thought, had denied her of light in her darkness.

We need to evacuate the fetus, the doctor said. I will direct them to contact your husband. He touched the back of her palm. “I am so sorry for your loss,” he said, with profound sadness.

By SJ Devereaux 

SJ Devereaux is a writer, filmmaker, and student located in Las Vegas, NV. They are studying English with a concentration in Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. You can find their works in various different online magazines dating back to 2020. 

Annabeth (written in 2021)

Those days when I would feel absolutely dreadful, I would spend time thinking about the bad. Those things helped me get through the pain that was brought on by the words that others said. It felt almost like those words were more painful than the feeling of when you break a bone for the first time. 

My neighbor came over every Saturday; we would have tea and cookies. Her name was Annabeth. I always loved that her name had two names put into one. That was beautiful. Her soul was like a warm blanket wrapped around you and she always carried herself with strength. She drank too much. I noticed that whenever we spent the Saturday morning teas at her house. She liked her whiskey. She liked it so much that it took her. 

When her daughter knocked on my door, I almost didn’t answer. There were lots of people that would come by my door, wanting to sell me something. I didn’t answer the door often. I felt off, so I peeked out the front window and saw that it wasn’t someone in a work uniform or suit. I walked back to the front door and opened it, just a crack. 

“Hello,” I spoke. 

She shuffled around with her feet. That’s something that I did too. The anxiety, I guess. She held a box in her hands. It said my name written across it in Annabeth’s handwriting. 

“Is that for me?” I asked since she wasn’t saying anything. 

“My mother,” She said, “passed away. Her name was Annabeth.”

I grabbed my heart, took it out of my chest, stepped on it until it turned a purple color, threw it back in my body, and forgot to sew stitches back into my skin. 

“Can I come in? I know that seems weird but I need to talk to you to know who my mother was to you,” she added. 

I nodded and opened up the door, exposing myself and the home I had created. I didn’t keep it as neat as I wish I did. It was only Annabeth and me who were ever over here so I never had to worry about anyone caring if I left a dirty tissue on the coffee table, or a book left open on the couch, or a coffee cup on the side table. I guess this was one of those times I felt insecure about the way I was living. 

I quickly ran to my stove because I had left the burner on. I wanted tea. Now I don’t feel like drinking tea when I just found out that the person who got me into drinking tea is no longer walking on this earth. 

I knew that Annabeth was plenty older than me. I knew that she was going to die before I would want. I never wanted that to happen to her, she was too kind. 

“My mom was ill, I don’t know if she told you,” Her daughter said. I still didn’t know her name. Annabeth never talked about her children. “She was stubborn as hell and she never let me help.”

That made me turn to look at her. Annabeth always let me help her, not that I would tell her that. She doesn’t need to know. 

I gestured with my hands for us to sit down at my kitchen table. My sketchbook was wide open. I was doodling before she came over. I quickly closed it so she couldn’t see what I was drawing and I put my pencils in the mug that I keep them in at my kitchen table because I can’t afford a desk for my art projects.

I moved into this house when I was fresh out of college. I didn’t know if I would like it here. It was far away from my past, which was something I wanted to get away from because I was someone else before I came here. I wanted to start new, and this was my chance. I had a roommate named Claire. She spent more time gone from the house, so I was okay with that. Then she split from her longtime partner and always moped around the house with a cigar dipped out of her mouth. I told her she couldn’t smoke in the house because I didn’t want the landlords to get upset with us. She didn’t care, so I told her she had to move out. She cursed me out as she drove away in that large moving truck. I was glad she was gone. I haven’t had a roommate since.  

“Do you want anything to eat or drink?” I asked. She shook her head. 

“No,” she replied. “I don’t want to be here long.”

She was nothing like Annabeth. She had no soul and she belonged out of my home. She was bringing in bad vibes and I didn’t like it at all. I wanted her to leave. But I’m not a rude person and I did say it was okay for her to come into my house. 

“My mother left you this box,” she said and pushed the box over my way. “She had a lot of useless things in her house. I don’t know if there’s anything valuable in there. We tried selling her China sets but no one wants them. I’m just going to trash them.” 

That made me sit tall in my chair. “She loved those sets,” I told her. 

“Useless information, kiddo.” She said back. “She loved a lot of things.” 

“You can’t get rid of the China sets,” I pronounced. She moved around, uncomfortably, in her chair. 

“I don’t know what to tell you,” she laughed. “I’m not keeping them.” 

“Do you love your mother?” I questioned her.

She frowned. “I loved her. Then she changed into whatever part of her you loved. You don’t know the part of her I know. The part of her that forgot to mother her three children. The part of her who got addicted to her feelings, and then her alcohol.”

I looked at my hands, not knowing what to say. 

“My mother left without saying anything. She dropped me off at school in my senior year, and then I never heard from her again. She left my father with three children that he didn’t know how to handle. You don’t understand.”

“I do,” I told her. “I lost the friendship with my mother. It’s something I regret daily. I love her, and always will. Annabeth was there for me when things got hard. I miss my mother so much.”

“I’m not here to talk about family drama,” She said. “Open the box please so I can finish taking care of Annabeth’s hoarding room.”

I opened the box, against my will. I would have opened it once she left, so then she didn’t ruin this for me. But she had some interest in what Annabeth left for me. 

I pulled open the box to find paper on the top. I removed the paper and folded it up. I would keep that. Anything Annabeth gives me is now special. 

There was a little wooden box in the cardboard box. I removed the box and opened it on the table. In the box, there was a little tea set. Two cups, two plates, and a teapot. 

I let some tears slide down my freckled face. 

“My mom,” She choked up. “My name is Bella.”

“I’m Frances. But you already know that,” I told her in reply. “Your mom loved every person she met.”

“I want to be like her,” Bella said. “She was so carefree. Loved. Careful at the same time. She loved me. I never got to tell her that I loved her.”

“She knows.”

“How do you know that?” Bella asked me. “You knew her now, I knew her then. Two different beings.” 

I nodded. “Maybe.”

“Or maybe not. We view our own failures. And as teenagers, we view our parent’s failures. Every fail is heightened. I don’t know why she left you. I don’t think we’ll ever know. But you, yourself, didn’t check up on her. She never mentioned you, but I saw the photos she tucked under her mattress or in between books. She loved you, Bella. She loves you.”

I walked over and held her hand. I didn’t know who this person was, but we were both grieving our mother.

“I wish I spent more time with her while she was here,” Bella told me. “I messed up on that one. I didn’t tell her anything about my life. She doesn’t know about my husband or son.”

“My mother was not my mother,” I said. I felt like sharing intense moments of my life, too. “Between sixth grade and graduation, something happened to her. She started getting upset over little things. Then she started hurting daddy, he left us. Once daddy left, it felt like our world was caving in. She was abusive and mean as hell. There was not one good thing about that witch. It doesn’t mean that I don’t think about her from time to time.”

Bella looked over at me with tears in her eyes and strolling down her face. “I get worried. I get worried that I’m going to turn on my boy.”

“I can tell you won’t.”

“How?”

“You’re strong, Bella. Stronger than you give yourself credit for.” I told her. 

Bella left about three hours later, once she realized that she has responsibilities. I was glad to meet her and spend the time we did together. 

She promised me that those China sets would not end up in the trash. She said she didn’t know what she was going to do with them but she knew that the trash was the wrong place. I knew that if she got rid of them, she would regret it more than she regrets not spending time with Annabeth. 

I woke up the next morning to a knock on my front door. All this knocking on my front door was making me crazy. I have a sign on my door that says “Please do not try to sell me anything” for a reason. Yet, I got up. I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t Bella. The last thing I wanted was for her to think I was ignoring her, even though I couldn’t do that anymore because we formed a bond. 

I opened the front door and no one was there. I was about to turn around and close the door when I looked down at the front step. Sitting on the front step was a box with my name written across it, just like the one Annabeth had made for me. 

I couldn’t sleep that night. I was angry at the lord. Angry that he would take the only mother figure in my life. Angry that he made Bella so regretful. Then I became uneasy. Annabeth had made this box for me. She knew she was dying, but she didn’t say anything to me. She knew I would need to help Bella. I think it was all part of her plan. 

I walked down to the front steps of my porch and picked up the box. I brought it into my kitchen and put it on my table, next to all my art supplies because desks are too expensive. I opened the box and laid on the top was an envelope with my name on it. 

I grabbed the envelope and tore it. 

Frances, 

I didn’t know that you existed before I showed up at your door. I was regretful and mean to you. I apologize for my uncalled-for behavior. I think you understand, though. 

My husband and I are heading out of town. My brother, James, will be coming through this week to gather the things he would like from mother’s house. I just wanted to let you know in case he looks like he also needs your angelic words to help him through his grieving process. Watch out for James, please. 

My love goes out to you, as I know you’re also grieving the death of Annabeth. I do believe she loved you very, very much. 

In the fashion of my mother, I have put together a box of things for you. One of those things might bring you love and peace. I hope it does. 

I would like to tell you that I could see your strength. You shared a piece of you that I needed. 

I don’t want to tell you what you should do with your life, but please call your mother. At least try. 

Your new friend, and connected sister, 

Bella Jean. 

I placed the letter to the side and peeked in the box. There were little Christmas ornaments, some yarn, and a heart-shaped cup. But below all that was a set of China. 

It was my favorite set whenever I went over to look at her China sets. Pink with gold lacing I loved this set. I love it, now. 

I put the set away in my cabinets and walked to the phone. 

It rang. 

And rang. 

“Hello,” a voice said. 

“Mom,” I said, “It’s Frances.”