You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty

by Akwaeke Emezi

“Do you think we’re having a quarter-life crisis?” Joy had asked once, while rolling up a joint in their living room. “First of all, we’re a few years too old for that,” Feyi had replied. “Second, I think we’re just figuring out how to survive a world on fire… that it’s okay to be alive.”

“I know she does. And that’s something I’ve learned in the years since, that there are so many different types of love, so many ways someone can stay committed to you, stay in your life even if y’all aren’t together, you know? And none of these ways are more important than the other.”

“Get into the rooms you need to be in so your work can do what it needs to do,” Joy had said. “Someone helped you, and so what? You know how many of these white kids are out here with art careers because their parents hooked them up? You better show up and show out, bitch. I can’t believe I’m having to talk a Nigerian into this, of all people.”

“He loved people being messy as fuck—he said it was one of the best things about being human, how we could make such disasters and recover from them enough to make them into stories later.”