The Furrows

by Namwali Serpell

my swimsuit was tangled in the crevices of my body. There

Then he shook his alien head and yelled into the wind, which ate the words right out of his mouth.

He taught me that grief doesn’t choose its timing well: you never know when it’ll grip your neck.

Nothing is real anyway. It’s all just electrical signals in the mind.

In the train, the AC hushed thinly and a polite robot told us to please stand clear of the closing doors, and we did, and of each other, too.

I confronted her about that first time but my anger always met Reena like water hitting ice: it either rolled off or froze into her own armor.

She didn’t know how to be loved. And you need that to know how to love.

Thing is, they liked him too. Mo saw something in them and he called it out and they liked being seen, being named like that.

As the afternoon passes, time starts to fold under its own weight like honey.

“But family hate has got some tenderness built into it.”

Charlotte is aware of it too. Her steps are sure as she comes closer, and her eyes don’t waver—they’re puffy and gray and her glasses make them huge, suffocating. Is the world holding its breath or am I?

“I don’t wanna tell you what happened. I wanna tell you how it felt.”

Dr. Weil would say I’m fixated, that central x of the word like a stitch binding me to you. I’m in your thrall, those tall letters on either side of the word imprisoning me.

Someone has turned a cash machine into a protest sign by scratching an E on either side of the ATM.

This city is you. You are its issue.

It has been a long time since I had a friend.