The Death of Vivek Oji

by Akwaeke Emezi

“I dreamt that I was our grandmother,” I tell him. “I looked in a mirror and she was there, just like the pictures, and she spoke to me in Igbo.” “What did she say?” “Hold my life for me.” I wait for his laugh, but it never comes. “Do you believe in reincarnation?” I ask him. “I’m not sure my belief matters,” he says. “If it is, it is, whether I believe it or not.”

My cousin looks at me with a

gentleness he shows to no one else. “Who are we to define what is impossible or not?” “You’re just saying that,” I tell him. He shakes his head. “I mean it. You know what’s been happening in your head. You’re the only person who knows. So ask yourself if it feels right, and somewhere, deep inside of you, there’s a compass that will tell you whether you’re right or wrong.” I smile at him. “Is this how you make decisions?” I tease. His eyes sweep over both of us, naked on the bed, and he doesn’t smile back. I feel a thrill as his gaze touches me; I know it is a precursor to his hands, his mouth, the marvelous rest of him. “Only the important ones,”

he replies, and then he reac...

Kavita remembered every second of it as if she was back at the table with him: the last time she would ever watch her child feed himself. That act of putting nourishment into his body—it was such an alive thing to do.

Terrible, Kavita thought. What a word. Did it feel like terror? More like horror, actually. Terrible sounded like it had a bit of acceptance in it, like an unthinkable thing had happened but you’d found space in your brain to acknowledge it, perhaps even begin to accept it. Then again, horrible sounded the same way. The words had departed from their origins. They were diluted, denatured. She looked up and realized that Somto was looking at her, sitting there in silence.

Juju leaned down to give Kavita a quick hug before she left, feeling how sharp her shoulder blades were, like a wishbone ready to snap.

sky. Maybe we were all pretending to be fine because the world gave us no other option.

when he danced and the girls danced with him and I thought, God forgive me, I really love him, I really do; when he was bright and brilliant and alive, my cousin, my brother, the love of my sinful life. —

Chika remained attached to their mother’s house, renovating and expanding it, like a parasite customizing its host’s body.

If Vivek had been alive, he would never have conceded her point, but when you’ve stood on ground and known your child’s bones are rotting beneath you, rage and ego fade like dust in a strong wind.

after she tried to destroy the old one. The air around me was damp, dew clinging to the grass and the leaves, and at the head of the grave the small star fruit tree, struggling out of being a seedling. I wasn’t sure why Aunty Kavita had picked a fruit tree that would feed on Vivek’s body. Uncle Chika probably would have selected something else, like a palm tree. Did she look forward to the day when it would actually have star fruits hanging from its branches? Would she pick them and eat them as if she was absorbing him, bringing him back inside where he’d come from? It would be something like Holy Communion, I imagined, body and blood turned into yellow flesh and pale green skin, bursting with juice. Or maybe she would never touch the fruit—maybe no one would—and they would fall back to the ground to rot, to sink back into the soil, until the roots of the tree took them back and it would just continue like that, around and around. Or birds would show up and eat the fruit, then carry Vivek around, giving life to things even after he’d run out of it himself.

Panic was a vulture inside my body, trying to get out, pecking and flapping wildly at me.

I needed to learn how to behave with this secret dropping petals inside me like this.

I don’t mind anymore. I see how things work now, from this side. I was born and I died. I will come back. Somewhere, you see, in the river of time, I am already alive.