What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky

by Lesley Nneka Arimah

He didn’t seem to mind how joy had become a finite meal she begrudged seeing anyone but herself consume. She wanted to ask him what he saw in her but was afraid his answer would be qualities she knew to be illusions. A carefree attitude that was simply carelessness. Bluntness mistaken for honesty when she was just mean.

Church meant my mother dressing me in frills too young for my years, sweating the starch out of said frills in the un-air-conditioned building, and seeing the woman my father left us for. She came every few Sundays, when the weighty sin of fornicating with a married man became too heavy to bear.

Girls with fire in their bellies will be forced to drink from a well of correction till the flames die out.