Gospel Okoro // Winner, The Leonard Ugwuanyi Prize for Flash Fiction, 2024.

…every now and then, in between mouthfuls of fufu and ofe nsala, ma hides in your chest a garden of words: “Keep your head high, high, up above the water,” the water, whose heart beats of life’s troubles whenever you visit the stream—the stream of seven eyes, as they call it, one of the rivers that holds a cloud of darkness under its lips, you always end up not swimming as other girls of the village do, with their wrappers tied loosely around the waist for the onlookers to bury their eyes in lust and their hairs matted in thick cornrows; rather, you sit at the mouth of the river, arms spread around your bony chest, the one—jokingly referred to as the rock upon which Christ would build his church, and you give a wry smile about this usual dry joke, but now you don’t smile, you watch, your eyes listen to the silence of the tree’s heartbeat, the pulsating rhythms and tempos of the river you know you can never know, the fish-like movements drawn around the body of the river, which reminds you of the day, the beginning of the end of the year, no, not the day you begrudgingly, or rather mistakenly put rat poison in ma’s meal of corn flour, instead of pa’s because he always beat her face beyond repair, and your eyes hated that sight, not that day, but the day Uncle T traced endless routes down your laps to the sacred V-town, your second home, a place of uninhabitable ballads, a hymen of madness, the one sacred hot hut that has become a war of lust between you and men-like-gods, and it was indeed a war trapped within your legs finding expression, because “It won’t hurt,” he told you, he told you, again, and his voice spread around the room just like he spread your innocence around the bed like butter on bread, tearing them open one after the other, one after the other, with your tears serving for breakfast, your arms arched behind your head, receiving every painful thrust, and the next time, the next time after the last time Uncle T was caught in between life and death, you found yourself in Father Damian’s arms, crying during confession, “Come in, Lord, my walls are fireproof,” you whispered into his ears, for he was the third person after pa whose breath you inhaled in love rings, in love circles, in pain and hurt and hurt and pain buried in your chest until ——-‘s ears could no longer stand, could no longer walk, could no longer fly, to distant destinations hidden from Google maps, that are murals of seven ways to die, no, seven ways to make heaven through your body, a secret place for fears, a harbour for flying planes of words in the world of your mouth, in the world underneath the world you entered the first day your feet stepped into water, you didn’t 

                                                     d 

                                                     r

                                                     o                          

                        you became the w a t (h) e r…            

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Gospel Okoro is a writer and researcher at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He served as associate critical editor of the Muse Journal, No. 50, an alumnus of the Journalism for Liberty Fellowship, Africa, and a member of the University of Nigeria Scholars Accelerator Community. His Minutes of Memories short story was awarded and shortlisted for Tell! Africa Storyteller Award of the Year in 2021. He’s also the recipient of the INKBLED AFRICA Under-30 Impact Awards. His works have appeared at Alewahouse, UpwriteNG, Providus Bank Poetry Café, OneBlackBoyLikeThat, Fiery Scribe, The Nation’s Newspaper, and elsewhere. He loves God and books.