The Thing Around Your Neck

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

You want to say that when he called you in New York, the first time you were hearing his voice in eighteen years, to tell you that Grandmama had died—I thought you would want to know, were his words—you leaned on your office desk, your legs turning molten, a lifetime of silence collapsing, and it was not Grandmama you thought of, it was Nonso, and it was him, Dozie, and it was the avocado tree and it was that humid summer in the amoral kingdom of your childhood and it was all the things you had not allowed yourself to think about, that you had flattened to a thin sheet and tucked away.

I just loved the phrase “ the amoral kingdom of your childhood”