1. 18 readers like

    kwasia

    I am leaving Accra today. I said goodbye to Nii and Kadija and Mariama, the littlest neighbours, and gave away all my pot plants. Unless I can earn enough money to come back from time ...read more
  2. 17 readers like

    falling, and small, and very far away

    I had an email from my partner’s new lover. It was my fault, I wrote to her first. This exchange happened last Saturday night, about three or four hours after he first told me. I'm ...read more
  3. 15 readers like

    why I blame myself for being raped (hint: not because it’s my fault)

    All my life I have been me. I didn't realise it at first. Presumably, as we say of infants, I was an extension of the everything, was my mother, I was the flitting shadows of ...read more
  4. 12 readers like

    that I fight

    The battle to take seriously my own life and prospects, and to treat myself well, is the great absorbing struggle of my life. After fifty or a hundred rapes, before which I had never kissed and ...read more
  5. 12 readers like

    walloped

    I went to have my hearing tested. This became necessary because a man had walloped me across the face: a man I loved. Needless to say, no man has ever hit me before and I'm ...read more
  6. 10 readers like

    belovedly

    Oh, Germany. Sometimes I am just so grateful to you! I came three years ago, for a week, with a suitcase of summer clothes. Stayed on and stayed. Met a man. Made some friends. Found ...read more
  7. 9 readers like

    beautiful is who you are

    I came to visit a Ghanaian friend who runs a very tiny, very humble business. When he had no customers he came and sat down. He saw tears in my eyes and leaned forward to ...read more
  8. 9 readers like

    backbone

    Over breakfast my partner announced he is falling in love with another woman. I said, "What?" The omelettes had turned out so well. It was a cool, greyish day. I had asked why he kept ...read more
  9. 9 readers like

    lost girl

    Last night a lost soul brushed past me on the street and I could feel the black, sucking wind. She was very beautiful, extremely young, just-enormous eyes. Bare feet and ankles swollen like stumps. Bruises. ...read more
  10. 9 readers like

    to meet my father

    I'm going into the difficult embrace of family life to say goodbye to my father. Our family relationships have been fraught with miscommunications, outbreaks of insanity, and violence. Now it's all coming to an end ...read more
  11. 8 readers like

    graffiti confetti butt

    I was cycling along the river where the water meets the trees, there is a little grove there which is sacred to me and it seems to be a forest in a parallel universe. It ...read more
  12. 8 readers like

    wait what

    When I got there the doctor said, "You know when we call you in at seven in the morning it's not good." She had called me in at 7.15am on Friday to give this news. ...read more
  13. 8 readers like

    for crying out quiet

    Eleven weeks ago today my husband walked out. I went to the park and when I came home, he was gone. When I closed the door behind me that morning there was no warning this ...read more
  14. 8 readers like

    that, and all the gods of grief

    For four weeks now, this terrible grief. It takes up residence in my throat, is heavy, slides into the sweet solar plexus where self-belief resides. Crushes back my breathing. Gives me the tired. It makes ...read more
  15. 8 readers like

    the family stones

    Caring for Dad is painful. I love him, naturally, and now he's very frail and unwell; so it's wrung from me like dark water out of soaked wood. But Dad tormented me with minor sexual ...read more
  16. 7 readers like

    dead man sleepwalking

    In this house of illness and pain I get lonely. Everyone is in bed by eight o'clock and the long night stretches ahead. Tonight I can hear the rain plinking on the skylight which reminds ...read more
  17. 7 readers like

    late afternoon squared

    In the late afternoon I walked down to the square. I've been indoors now every day of eight weeks. People were sitting round the edge of the grass as though it were a swimming pool ...read more
  18. 7 readers like

    out of nowhere

    My dad trained me to be raped, by minor and persistent infringements which he would not withdraw or desist in, no matter how I protested. He taught me saying No had no importance. I had ...read more
  19. 7 readers like

    mud road

    We are walking down the road in the middle of the night. The road is made of mud. Our new home is in a village and it has no address. An urban village, lapped on ...read more
  20. 7 readers like

    possessive hand

    The little cat puts her hand possessively on my arm. After a moment's thought her other hand creeps up to join it and I remember the day I finally found her again, after she had ...read more