WriteNowLit

  I set my husband on fire tonight. Say that once and the world rearranges itself around the sentence. Neighbors will say it was the gas. The police will say faulty wiring. Aunty Funke will clutch her chest and say, “Jesu, who do this?” The men at the filling station will joke later— if they joke at all— about how women these days. But you and I, we know what happened. You will, by the time I am finished telling you. I am in the hibiscus, the leaves pricking my knees. My wrapper is damp with dew and petrol; my hair smells like the filling station at dawn. The compound is awake in that small, noisy way compounds wake when the impossible happens: doors banging, lightbulbs swinging, children wailing because they don’t understand adults yet. Somebody is already recording with a phone. Somebody else is praying in a voice that wants to cover itself with certainty. Inside, the house is a theatre. The curtains are orange, then red, then gone. For a moment I think I see him at the window— h...