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Short story category: 10 Minutes

She had trouble recognising her son when he visited. This wasn’t entirely accurate, he acknowledged; Bernie was either known or new. When he arrived at the nursing home, a carer would greet him and indicate if it was a sunny or cloudy day; it referred to his mother’s powers of recall, but those

I was in the air when she died. Gliding over the Black Sea, too far above the clouds to see the glistening blue breaking up hours of land mass beneath my feet. Struggling to sleep with a deflating neck pillow and a restless mind. I was three hours into my first leg when she drew her last breath.

The first time I realised Maami had her own voice, could make her own decisions without the help of my father, was the day Bami brought home a new wife, and Maami kicked against it with such vehemence that surprised me. This happened a day after Aunty Suliya came from Iseyin to seek Bami's financ

It was a foolhardy thing to do, indicative of the brothers’ lack of experience with high volumes of water. Indicative of hubris, too, if boys that young can be accused of hubris. But perhaps it would be more accurate simply to call it innocence. It had been a long winter followed by a rainy Mar

If dreams count as experience, then I’ve died about 600 times. I pulled that number out of nowhere – I don’t actually know how many times I've dreamed of my own death, but I know it's probably an abnormal amount. At least once a week. One sharp self-slap across the face was enough to know this

Resting my forehead on the tiny, wheezing fan in my 38°C apartment, I watch sunlight dapple and blur through its bars and make white the yellow and perhaps someday this city will quieten. Maybe it was the heat then, too. Maybe it was this glimmering tongue of a city that I was so sure would swallow

Heaven seems rounder at night. It cloches us, breathing frost. The weather is fine; no one will worry about Lina until morning. Thank God for the illness that shrunk her in childhood, made her delicacy indelicate, pocked her and put her at the edge of protection. Thank God there is no God, only h

She made her way slowly up the stairs. She had changed for the evening, though it was barely teatime. The dress in heavy luxurious blue silk flowed in opulent folds from her restricted waist. At the top of the stairs, she had to catch her breath. The action gave her some satisfaction. Her hair was p