We Need New Names

by NoViolet Bulawayo

Then the tall one with hair all over and a jungle on his face asks again, What kind of game were you just playing? and Bastard puts his shirt on and says, Can’t you see this is for real?

When things fall apart, the children of the land scurry and scatter like birds escaping a burning sky. They flee their own wretched land so their hunger may be pacified in foreign lands, their tears wiped away in strange lands, the wounds of their despair bandaged in faraway lands, their blistered prayers muttered in the darkness of queer lands.