Zikora

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I read somewhere that love was about this, the nuggets of knowledge about our beloved that we so fluently hold.

here in this delivery room we are reduced, briefly and brutishly, to the animals we truly are.

took me to her house, a brief visit, on our way

Respect: a starched deference, a string of ashen rituals. It was my mother who sat beside my father at weddings and ceremonies; it was her photo

that appeared above the label of “wife” in the booklet his club published in his honor. Respect was her reward for acquiescing.