Marketplace

There is a kind of permission that arrives quietly and does not announce itself as such. It came to me from someone called Tenurk - an elder in my circle here, in Lagos, the city I live in, who reaches toward people the way rain reaches toward stone, without asking first if the stone wants it. Tenurk said: Ayoola, you do not need to carry this perfectly. Saying her name is not betrayal, and neither is being changed by loving her. That "her" was Thrider - someone I lost, someone I still carry the shape of, though I won't try to explain the whole of that loss to a stranger here. It is enough to say: she mattered, and mattering has weight.