Butter Honey Pig Bread

by Francesca Ekwuyasi

After scouring self-help blogs online, Wolfie found testaments on journaling as a healing practice. He brought me an unlined brown leather-bound journal and suggested I write about my sadness. I started many sentences, but the writing was peeling me open and unearthing questions I didn’t want to think about, so I let my pen glide over the smooth pages in meaningless lines and loops. I doodled for what seemed like ages, page after page, in a soothing flow, emerging hours later feeling rested. I started attempting to render objects in ink, simple still lifes of dirty plates, stacked books, fruit. Eventually, I grew more interested in drawing faces, so I looked through my things for family photographs. I was looking for a particular portrait of my father as a boy, the one with his hair picked out into a glorious Afro, a toothy smile stretched wide across his round face, the embroidered neckline of his dashiki peeking through, just barely in the frame.