Zikora

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“It’s funny how pregnancy is like body hair. We scrub and scrape our armpits and upper lip and legs because we hate to have hair there. Then we pamper and treat the hair on our heads because we love hair there. But it’s all hair. It’s the wanting that makes the difference.”

Wanting

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

On Love

think. How you imagine something will be is always worse than how it actually ends up being,”

Worries

Nature must not want humans to reproduce, otherwise birthing would be easy, even enjoyable: babies would easily slip out, and mothers would remain unmarked and whole, merely blessed by having bestowed life.

Of birth

I believed then that love had to feel like hunger to be true.

Of love

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.

Of respect