CHIDEZIRI    I kiss her now, because when she's gone, I want to remember how her smile tastes mixed with tears.    I want to remember the flayed pink that the sky took on, how rays peered down through clouds.    I want to remember the mangroves, their dying leaves forming a glade of rusted confetti.   I want to remember the sun, before it was eclipsed.                                 ~                         AMANDALeft to Aunty Seedy, suffocation by embracing is how I'd die. "Nne, I'll miss you sorely." She says, smothering me.    I lose count after the seventh hug. All our stuff will be moved to her house. Sofas,

After four months of complete drought, March releases the first rains. Rooftops turn red with dust filled water, dust that accumulated over the dry season. Children play around under the rain, splashing in puddles. I spend half of most days in second term numb and staring. Staring at the teacher, at the writing on the board that makes no sense to me whatsoever, at the wall clock hung above the marker board. Then I spend the other half of the day noticing I'm numb and staring. In church, I no longer swing my shoulders to the music. I don't listen to J.Cole anymore. She is too everywhere. Too present to be so absent. My clothes smell of rain-beaten leaves, of abandonment, of freshly written poems. How hard I scrub makes no noticeable difference. Weeks after January the sixth, my knuckles are red and raw from trying to scrub her away, and failing to. She is too everywhere. I learn to stay in my room, curtains drawn

 Calling Ma to tell her the exam is over will only make her rush me, I think. Today is the one day I don't want to rush things. So when others pull out their phones and gather round for selfies and corny posts such as GRADUATE IN A BIT or BEEN HERE, DONE THAT, I push my phone deeper into the slash pocket of my overall. "And we good to go!" my best friend appears just as she disappeared: when I wasn't looking, and all of a sudden. She stretches her arms out for a hug. "Ewwww." I dodge her. My best friend, Amanda, only seems to want hugs after one of her many visits to the toilets. There's enough bacteria on the doors alone to kickstart an epidemic. "You know you want this hug," Amanda grins, inching closer. The periodic toilet frolicking is normal, the usual. The grinning is new. Whatever Port-Harcourt did to her was good. She even let me read her journal for like six seconds—which is a record. She n