[{"id":11830,"date":"2026-09-03T13:10:01","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T18:10:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/preelit.com\/?p=11830"},"modified":"2026-09-03T13:13:22","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T18:13:22","slug":"the-unbuilding-of-a-universe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/09\/03\/the-unbuilding-of-a-universe\/","title":{"rendered":"The Unbuilding of a Universe"},"content":{"rendered":"

DARREN DOYLE<\/p>\n

This island was too small. Not here. Not anymore. There were whole new worlds in this house that came out when he came in. He walked through the gates into dangerous territory, the walls painted in bright colours. The sky was blue overhead, the wind blowing through the bougainvillea sprawling untended at the walls. Inside it was darker; his aunt smiling when she saw him. He gave a smile in response but held himself back from a hug. There were grass clippings at the base of his pants, dirt collected on his knees and hands, and sweat making drooping patterns down the front and back of the t-shirt he wore. Aunty Parisha ignored all this and brought him in anyway.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou good, D’Adrian?\u201d<\/p>\n

He nodded, \u201cAs good as mornings an\u2019 nights.\u201d<\/p>\n

She was going out \u2014 slightly frantically and distractedly \u2014 as he came in, leaving him with the house. She explained to him as she left that his cousin, Junior, was sleeping in the back in his crib now. D\u2019Adrian didn\u2019t have to do anything, just check in occasionally, but don\u2019t touch him if his hands were dirty. Take a shower before handling him or at least wash his hands. But he didn\u2019t have to worry too much because Junior was sleeping soundly and she would only be gone a little while. He could go ahead and work as he normally would. He walked out with her and stood near the gate as she got into her car. She drove off, pulling away from the pickup he had trundled up the hill after her call which had inadvertently cornered him into coming to the house even though he didn\u2019t want to.<\/p>\n

From where D\u2019Adrian stood now, he could turn and make an assessment. While everyone had been distracted, the foliage had fallen into chaos. The lawn needed to be mowed, ixora and hibiscus needed to be trimmed and there were vines creeping up the pillars that supported the roof off to one side. He took what he needed from the truck bed and walked back in to tackle the greenery. He laid everything out over the oil stains in the driveway and went in to check on his cousin. He went by the TV his aunt had forgotten to turn off, the newscaster talking on low volume about radars and a raid. He stopped to turn it off. He found his cousin sleeping soundly, just as his aunt had described. A floor fan circulated the hot, torpid air around his crib. He only glanced at him before he left the room for a glass of water from the kitchen. Standing there after finishing it, he caught sight of the first inhabitant of one of the worlds within the house.<\/p>\n

The Thing flashed by, momentarily visible through a doorway; leftover creations that went hurtling wildly down hallways, looking for safe havens. D\u2019Adrian followed it out, tracking its traces into his old bedroom but from there he wasn\u2019t sure where it had gone. He checked under the bed, chest of drawers and inside cupboards but those, he knew, were too obvious. He found it hidden in a forgotten cup, which must have rolled off the bed and landed with its mouth facing the corner where two walls of the room met. He shook it out into his palm. It looked up and observed him as he observed it, so small it could dance on a fingernail; it was almost weightless and bursting with a feathery light. It brimmed with an unmistakable energy so that it felt like it might burst apart at his touch. He set about the business of undoing it.<\/p>\n

If there was one there would be more, given how long he had left it here. He knew he had gotten lucky with that one, though. He glanced around with recognition at the room. Startled at the thought of where he was, he left quickly. Outside, he took a stick of gum from a packet and slipped it into his mouth. He liked to have something to chew while he worked. It allowed him to focus his attention elsewhere.<\/p>\n

D\u2019Adrian moved around to the back of the house and started up the lawn mower. Unconsciously, he found himself pushing it along slower when his right ear \u2014 his good ear \u2014 was positioned towards the house and faster when it wasn\u2019t, listening out for the cries of a baby. He had lost hearing in the left: a childhood accident, playing unsupervised with fireworks. He wasn\u2019t even sure he could hear the sound of a baby crying over the churning of a lawn mower\u2019s motor. He felt uncomfortable whenever he slowed. Taking your time among The Things, for any reason, had to be a bad idea. At any moment one might raise its wispy head, its pores tingling, sensing his presence from its position further up the hill this house rested on. It might float up through the ceiling of the house that sheltered it \u2014 the house he avoided even more than the one he was in \u2014 and up some more until it floated above the neighbourhood. It would drift from side to side as it came down over the overgrown trees until it reached his aunt\u2019s house and looked across but didn\u2019t see him. He was hidden away in the backyard after all.<\/p>\n

He cut the lawn mower now. There was a toad in front of it which had stood perfectly still even as the loud machine approached it, staring sidelong at the red of its hood. Even after he stopped the engine it refused to move. He had never seen anything like it. It must have felt like it was cornered with a chain-link fence off to one side, the lawn mower on the other and overgrown grass in front of it. See, that was the problem right there \u2013 things like that; odd things. This island was too small; chaos could erupt at any moment and the green mountains walled you in. Not here. He didn\u2019t like coming here. Not anymore. Not when it dragged up memories of exchanges with Angela. He spat out his gum and took another from its packet, sticking it into his mouth.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

D\u2019Adrian keeps thinking about the emptiness of the house as his phone vibrates intermittently with the conversation. It is pouring rain outside and the raindrops against the galvanised roof fill the silences between her responses.<\/p>\n

U home? \u2013 D\u2019Adrian | 7:43pm<\/em><\/p>\n

Yeah \u2013 Angela | 7:47pm<\/em><\/p>\n

Anybody by you? D\u2019Adrian | 7:59pm<\/em><\/p>\n

Why u always want to know dat? Angela | 8:00pm<\/em><\/p>\n

Gyal\u2026 D\u2019Adrian | 8:06pm<\/em><\/p>\n

Yuh see u\u2026 Angela | 8:06pm<\/em><\/p>\n

Who by you Dawson? D\u2019Adrian | 8:06pm<\/em><\/p>\n

My brotha here n mummy gone out to come back. Angela | 8:07pm<\/em><\/p>\n

U comin? Angela | 8:19pm<\/em><\/p>\n

Nah. Today is my rest day. Walk down to the standpipe yuh need d exersize. D\u2019Adrian | 8:28pm<\/em><\/p>\n

Wah you talkin bout? Angela | 8:30pm<\/em><\/p>\n

You gettin fat. D\u2019Adrian | 8:34pm<\/em><\/p>\n

Haha! Wah you talkin bout? Angela | 8:36pm<\/em><\/p>\n

You still coming right? Angela | 8:51pm<\/em><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Inside now he found another one of The Things dead in the living room. He leaned over to examine it and a breath out of his mouth blew it to dust. He wondered if it had suffered when it died. He wondered too if it had suffered while it lived. The first time he had made one of them he had been about seven. In the excitement of its discovery, he announced its appearance with a shout to his mother who just gave an unfocused look at where he pointed and carried on with the phone conversation she had been having. The second time he started speaking to The Thing quietly. Annoyed by it, he told it to go away, and his mother jerked her head violently to ask him who he was talking to. After he explained, she took his head in her hands and started praying. He said nothing about them after that.<\/p>\n

Over the years it became apparent that he would never be able to stop making them when he didn\u2019t want to, they would always squeeze into existence through some accidental manipulation of his hands. If he kept his hands still, perfectly still\u2026 but sometimes even then they popped into existence. They came out however they pleased. Once he made one that looked up at him mischievously at the moment of its creation and took off before he could stop it, its legs somehow backwards. He had made another that looked like flames were dancing on its flesh which frightened him so much he had jumped. Another scurried off and he found it later, halfway through building a little floating globe a thousand times its size in the corner of an unused cupboard in his bedroom. One time he made two in one go, another time three appeared out of his hands all at the same time.<\/p>\n

He had spent most of his teenage years here at his aunt\u2019s house, a host of The Things left behind when he left. Growing up he barely knew his father who had wandered distractedly to the peripheries of their lives, and his mother \u2013 who had been pouring large portions of herself into her work at one point; waking before dawn and returning late at night \u2013 had asked her sister to take care of her only son when she couldn\u2019t. All in all, a very Caribbean arrangement.<\/p>\n

He hid inside now to escape the claustrophobic feel of the outdoors and to wait out the toad. He made himself a sandwich from the things in the kitchen, throwing the gum he chewed into the kitchen bin, and biting in. He sweated in the kitchen as he had been sweating outside in the sun and his toe hurt. The baby toe on his right foot. The one he had managed to slice apart as a youth when he had tripped running barefooted with scissors. He came out of the incident with nine and seven-eighths of his toes and the ability to predict the weather. In perhaps a reverse of the way arthritic people could tell it would rain by the pain in their joints, when it was about to rain his baby toe would be painless.<\/p>\n

He wandered the house as he ate. He found cobwebs in the corridors between the rooms and listened to the old, familiar noises the house made as it settled in the midday heat. Here, on the smooth tiles of the back verandah, was where he broke his hand rocking one of the chairs that wasn\u2019t meant to be rocked. And this was the vase he had cracked playing football in the house; he stopped, turning it to examine the massive fissure that was cleverly hidden against the wall. And that kitchen rod in the living room was the one that had held up the curtain he briefly set on fire while playing with matches. Back in the kitchen he found an old cellphone on the counter he had used in his teens. Picking it up, he tried to figure out how it might have gotten there.<\/p>\n

He had been a sullen child growing up, all alone with his uncle, aunt and cousins who were all much older than him. It was in this solitude that he discovered the mysterious power he possessed. Not to create beings but to influence them. Other people who commanded respect did it, like politicians, with a falseness of wisdom or composure but D’Adrian Lourde was so much more. In the way people drank to get incredibly drunk you could drink him in to get incredibly sober so that suddenly your inhibitions were raised and revelry and discomposure seemed absurd in the face of everything. People were drawn to this, a certain brokenness which they found in him. Angela was infatuated by it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Angela would sit and talk to him about her family, using their names as though he was supposed to know them too. When finally he came across them he would study each individual until he knew for sure that he could match them back to Angela\u2019s descriptions.<\/p>\n

When, all those years ago, his Aunt handed him the phone with his mother on the other end telling him he could now come home, Angela could possibly have been the reason he stayed even though she was definitely the reason he later left. He sat in the living room with the white handset pressed to his ear and listened almost mutely as she explained the arrangements for his return. He threw out some questions to derail the effort: Aunty Parisha know? (I talk to your Aunty already, D’Adrian.), I have a lot of t\u2019ings to move across (I will come pick you up in the car \u2014 and you don\u2019t have to move everyt\u2019ing across one time, y\u2019know.) And, uhm, so Marlon does drop me to cricket practice on Wednesdays. (Yes, I talk to your Aunty already. I could drop you after I come home from work and if I runnin\u2019 a li\u2019l late you could always call to ask Marlon to pick you up and drop you off.) and finally, I would have to go to a new school? (You could still go to the same school \u2014 it a li\u2019l further away but y\u2019ll jus\u2019 have to get up earlier in the mornin\u2019.)<\/p>\n

They talked some more before hanging up and the next day, a Saturday, his mother showed up in her old silver Nissan just as she promised. They spent almost an hour packing his things into the car, his mother smiling and laughing. At the end of it, D’Adrian went in to go look for something he had forgotten in his room. Almost two hours later, his aunt and his mother who had been chatting in the front yard went in to see what he was up to. They walked in and found him with tears hidden in the corners of his eyes and understood that he wanted to stay.<\/p>\n

\u00a0***<\/p>\n

The moment he decides to leave comes soon after that Saturday. He is sitting alone in the house when Angela\u2019s name flashes up on his phone screen. He answers.<\/p>\n

\u201cD’Adrian?\u201d<\/p>\n

In the background, voices:<\/p>\n

You need to calm down.<\/em><\/p>\n

I can\u2019t <\/em>calm down, Sterling.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cD’Adrian?\u201d<\/p>\n

He hears a woman\u2019s voice say again, viciously:<\/p>\n

No, I can\u2019t take it easy. We have a teenage daughter who’s so…dotish she get herself pregnant in the first place and then t\u2019ree months later she still don’t know she pregnant.<\/em><\/p>\n

In a whisper, \u201cD’Adrian?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2026 you saw the tex\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat tex\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI jus\u2019\u2026 the one I jus\u2019 sen\u2019 you?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo\u2026 Hold on, eh. Lemme check\u2026 Wha\u2019 you sen\u2019 me that for?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou wasn\u2019\u2026 you wasn\u2019 wit\u2019 Gary before me?\u201d Silence on the line. \u201cHello?\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

No response because Angela is confused. So confused that he would think it possible someone else besides him could be responsible and after a moment of reasoning remember that it isn\u2019t and later in the heat of the moment when her parents ask (Who is the father?) grow so ashamed by his rejection she does not speak D\u2019Adrian\u2019s name. Not then. Not ever. And when they press, staring down at her disbelievingly because they had worked so hard to build the right environment for their daughter to thrive in, finally she responds, \u201cNobody.\u201d Which prompts her mother\u2019s hands to fly up from where they are positioned, akimbo, on her waist, \u201cWell, kill me dead,\u201d she says, \u201cWe have the Virgin Mary sitting on we couch, oui<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

The voice comes into focus again for D\u2019Adrian:<\/p>\n

Where she gone? Where that little\u2026 I will wring that little gi\u2019l neck, \u2018u\u2019know. Sterling. Call your daughter please before I\u2026 Angela!<\/em><\/p>\n

Down the line he hears her jump.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Outside, he poured gasoline into the brush cutter. Setting the can aside and moving to pick up the equipment he felt a familiar sensation, like a release, in his hands. He was too slow trying to pull them apart. A jolt, and it was there where it hadn\u2019t been before in the space between his palms. It appeared in a flash that was gradual, like lightning crackling across a sky \u2014 The Thing coming into existence in stages from the top of the head, downwards to the very end of its toes. Reflexively, he snatched hold of it, pulling it apart before it had a chance to escape. It vanished just as quickly as it came into existence, from beginning to end a look of confusion on its face. Staring at the empty space where it had been he felt a stab of guilt. There was something about the way it had stared at the world in the second that it existed. Then an urge that he had never had before. He leaned over to wipe his forehead against his sleeve, giving himself a moment to consider it. He raised his head and his hands, with no idea what he had to do or if it would work. But it did, almost immediately. This one \u2014 short and thin \u2014 popped into existence with its mouth open as though in the middle of a sentence. It raised its head to stare him in the face, shutting its mouth slowly.<\/p>\n

He held its gaze unblinkingly, something like panic building inside him. Then, as though it could sense what he was about to do, it shifted its tiny features and bolted. In response, he moved too quickly to grab hold of it, tripping over himself and landing in the grass of the backyard. He looked up again to find it but couldn\u2019t. What he found instead was a metallic taste in his mouth. He stood, bending over to spit. The gum he had been chewing came out, but no blood along with it. Although, the side of his mouth hurt where his teeth had clamped when he fell.<\/p>\n

He looked around forlornly, finally turning his attention to the chewed bit of gum nestled in the grass at his feet. Without the fixation, the yard started feeling more oppressive. The house felt like it was growing darker and more demanding. He reached into his pocket finding that he had used his last stick of gum. Jumping at an excuse to escape, he left everything as it was and in a moment he was in his truck, driving towards the new grocery he saw on his way to the house. There was a tension in him that made itself known by virtue of fading the further he drove from the house. His grip loosened on the wheel, his entire body relaxing into the seat. At the same time, he had this thought in the back of his head like he might have left the iron on that he knew it was best to distract himself from.<\/p>\n

It was the last Saturday of the month and there were lines of cars in the grocery\u2019s parking lot. Walking in, the newness of it all washed over him like a salve. There had been a woman in the parking lot coming out of the car next to his who had leaned in to talk to a baby the woman next to her was carrying. She asked it expectantly if Mummy had remembered to bring the handkerchief to cover its head seeing as it looked like rain was about to fall. D\u2019Adrian\u2019s toe agreed. He looked up and saw grey clouds.<\/p>\n

The \u00a0woman\u2019s words followed him inside all the way to one of the shelves just in front of the express lane where the gum was stacked and all the way out again towards the exit. The door slid open as he made his way out and warm air rushed in from outside, sweeping the cool air of the grocery away. A boy ran in and stopped just past the door, spinning around to look out again towards someone unseen. He seemed to be about the right age; a thought. A second boy, an exact copy of the first, ran in to stand next to his twin briefly before running back out again. Walking by them both, D’Adrian saw a face he recognised.<\/p>\n

It looked like Angela though it probably wasn\u2019t. He was past her in a heartbeat and all the while she had her head turned away from him towards the woman next to her.<\/p>\n

But as he left, now hurriedly, one of the twins went running past Angela (because, of course, it was Angela) and she turned to call him back trying one name and then the other: \u201cEmmanuel!?-Emmerson!?\u201d. When she glanced up and saw D\u2019Adrian, recognizing him immediately even though she had only seen his back, it set her blood boiling. The moment Emmanuel\/Emmerson was within reach, she dragged him to her, setting his head shaking like a rag doll\u2019s and lambasted him for running off.\u00a0 She was so aggressive, it startled the other shoppers. The boy, too surprised to remember to cry, stood stock still while D’Adrian, the unknown god of his existence, made his retreat behind him.<\/p>\n

Getting into his truck, D\u2019Adrian paused to wipe the sweat from his forehead before he tumbled the engine and backed out of his spot. He sat behind the wheel navigating the parking lot, trying to make his way out. With the grocery so busy, cars were lined up all through the narrow lanes between the parking spots. He studied the situation grimly, taking a second to realise the honking he was hearing was directed at him. There was a woman directly in front of him who leaned off her car horn when he took notice giving him the sign of utter disapproval. He studied her. There was nothing behind her, he realised. He was trying to create an exit where none existed. That was the problem right there. This island was too small, old allies could attack at any moment, everyone walled you in and memories lived on every corner.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

In the weeks following the argument with her parents, Angela hides herself in the bathroom to sneak messages to D\u2019Adrian. She must remember to type in the number correctly each time as she has already erased his existence from her phone.<\/p>\n

D’Adrian? Angela<\/em> | Sunday 11:36pm<\/em><\/p>\n

Hello? Angela | Sunday 11:38pm<\/em><\/p>\n

Hello? Angela | Monday 11:15pm<\/em><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t tell them it was u… Angela | Wednesday 11:26pm<\/em><\/p>\n

Hello? Angela | Yesterday 11:45pm<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0***<\/p>\n

It was only when he was climbing out of his truck at his aunt\u2019s house that he remembered the baby. He had been away maybe twenty minutes. He had completely forgotten his cousin and now the memory came rushing back again. It was alone in that room, all alone in that house, all alone in the world. All alone, a mere blink, in the vastness of time.<\/p>\n

Before the baby\u2019s time. Before it\u2019s great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandparents looked up from the things they played with while they crawled in the dirt. Before the earth that would cradle its kind hurtled, crashed and cooled. When it\u2019s very universe was a toddler, a baby, an entity just being born. Before this baby existed might have well been an eternity and after it died the same. Then the baby\u2019s parents plucked it out of non-existence.\u00a0Plucked it out and set it in the middle of two eternities and somehow contrived through the passing off of responsibility to forget it.<\/p>\n

D\u2019Adrian hurried inside, checked the crib and found it empty. He was kneeling, shifting the crib aside anxiously to scan the spaces there for a baby that might have stood up, climbed out and gotten stuck, asphyxiated maybe, when he heard a noise behind him. Aunty Parisha stopped at the door, jiggling and cooing at a gurgling baby. Her eyes were set hard on him, her face was completely expressionless. \u201cYou jus abandon the chil\u2019 and gone your way?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWoman, wha\u2019 you talkin\u2019 \u2018bout? Is right there by the grocery I went.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWho you callin\u2019 \u2018woman\u2019?\u201d She shot him a look that bludgeoned him into silence. A moment more of it and she moved away, her footsteps receding down the hall. He was left staring at the empty space where she had been, angry that he had been defeated so easily.<\/p>\n

Although, he wasn\u2019t sure that was why he was angry. The anger had come in before and bided its time, waiting to be released. The anger was a result of coming to the realisation that any life was bigger than the lies you told yourself. It was anger that came from discomfort. You just couldn\u2019t be permitted to create anything that complex only to destroy it with ineptitude.<\/p>\n

It took him several moments \u2014 how long he wasn\u2019t sure \u2014 but after a time of dark thoughts in his head and staring blankly at empty space, he caught a glimpse of light coming from the space he had created pulling the crib away from the wall. Distracted, he leaned closer to stare at it; what The Things had built. He had never seen one so developed before. They had a planet and a sun, stars, black holes, solar systems and galaxies. Everything revolving \u2014 working crudely. He marvelled at it all briefly before he leaned in closer, his intent to unbuild it.<\/p>\n

How to unbuild a universe: Do nothing. After all, any decent universe is merely a disaster billions of years in the making.<\/p>\n

Or\u2026<\/p>\n

If you simply must, it is frightfully easy to unbuild a universe. Just set one thing off. Gravity. Light. Space. Time. Matter. Step into their lives and destroy their world as they know it. Set their universe grinding to an unsustainable halt. Watch black holes form from their imploded stars. Supernovae explode and incinerate worlds.\u00a0Interfere with orbiting satellites and send them crashing into planets.\u00a0Poke at those planets and watch them spin out of their orbits, ice over or combust. Pull at space or squeeze it tight and watch the very fabric of their space-time continuum wobble and collapse. Make time run out of order; the past, the present; the present, the past and the future so certain it feels as though it has happened or is happening. Fiddle with matter until it transmutes. Watch their environment transform into something that makes their lives untenable. Have them suffocate on chemicals or watch their planet spin into gas at their feet. The whole thing is so easy you can do it by accident.<\/p>\n\n\t\t

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tDarren Doyle is a Trinidadian-born writer currently based in Cambridgeshire, UK. His work was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize (2015) and has appeared in Susumba\u2019s Book Bag. His fiction explores the complexities of Caribbean identity, perception, and history. Website: https:\/\/darrendoyle.com\/<\/a> \u00a0\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Thing flashed by, momentarily visible through a doorway; leftover creations that went hurtling wildly down hallways, looking for safe havens. 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Empty Boat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>TRESHA LIONEL<\/p>\n<p>What is a wave but a giving that rehearses its taking away.<br \/>\nBeckon and retreat<br \/>\nto repeat<br \/>\nuntil we call it nature<\/p>\n<p>The sea gave us back our boy<br \/>\nteeth protruding from skin,<br \/>\na roar lodged in the throat\u2019s ridges<br \/>\nlocs bleached and broken<br \/>\nagainst the boat\u2019s pink insides<\/p>\n<p>Offered back to us<br \/>\na sacrifice we have learnt to accept<br \/>\n\u2014 One fisherman every now and then.<\/p>\n<p>But this boat returns to us charred<br \/>\ndelivered hastily by watery hands<br \/>\nto the waiting arms of Dennery fishermen<br \/>\nwho cradle sorrow and injustice<\/p>\n<p>Terrorism looks like a small, empty, burnt boat<br \/>\ntied to a coconut tree, unmoving<\/p>\n<p>Tied to a community taught not to move<br \/>\nagainst the stronger and more violent winds,<br \/>\nthe waves, bigger all around us<br \/>\ntake widening handfuls of our shore and souls<br \/>\ntaking more of us than it gives back.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Beckoning,\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Retreating,<\/p>\n<p>Beckoning,\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Retreating<br \/>\nwhile we knit more nets<br \/>\nteeth protruding from skin, smiling,<br \/>\nroar lodged in our throats, we wait our tur\u2014<\/p>\n\n\t\t<div class='author-shortcodes'>\n\t\t\t<div class='author-inner'>\n\t\t\t\t<div class='author-info'>\n\t\t\tTresha Lionel is a Saint Lucian writer, journalist, and community advocate whose work explores memory, identity, gender, and social change in the Caribbean. Her fiction and essays have been published in The Caribbean Writer, adda, nouv\u00e9l and Longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. She is currently pursuing an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. Beyond her writing, Lionel is the founder of Vieux Fort Strong, a community organization focused on literacy, youth development, and social transformation in Saint Lucia. Through her podcast, Go There with Tresha Lionel, and her broader body of work, she seeks to create space for difficult conversations about justice and belonging.\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is a wave but a giving that rehearses its taking away.<br \/>\nBeckon and retreat<br \/>\nto repeat<br \/>\nuntil we call it nature<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15102494,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\r\n\r\n{excerpt}\r\n\r\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[422,728594591,728594626],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","category-pree-15","category-tresha-lionel","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Empty Boat - PREE<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/09\/03\/the-empty-boat\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Empty Boat - PREE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What is a wave but a giving that rehearses its taking away. 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A progeny of dirt and divinity drawing inspiration from the commonality of the diapora. His poetry has appeared in Moko Magazine, Poui, Ponciana Paper Press, Museum Association of the Carribbean online exhibition amongst others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pawn to D4<br \/>\nwe don’t have the legs to stand on<br \/>\nor arms to stop quarrels from reaching<br \/>\nour waters, we don’t own<br \/>\nthese bodies of water or airspace<br \/>\nwe can be toppled with one tomahawk\u2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15102494,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\r\n\r\n{excerpt}\r\n\r\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[728594625,422,728594591],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eugene-elira","category-poetry","category-pree-15","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - 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Mother Folded My Father\u2019s Guayaberas and other Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>AM\u00cdLCAR PETER SANATAN<\/p>\n<h3>My Mother Folded My Father\u2019s Guayaberas<\/h3>\n<p>Years before I was born,<br \/>\nmy father told my mother \u2013<br \/>\nthen comrade-woman \u2013<br \/>\nhe\u2019d come back<br \/>\nfrom Georgetown.<\/p>\n<p>When the time was right,<br \/>\nhe was dishonest about itineraries.<\/p>\n<p>But as long as the bodies<br \/>\nnever turned up on the Fort \u2013<br \/>\na man renamed to cover his eyes<br \/>\nfrom the trauma of losing his father \u2013<br \/>\nmy father was on a frontline.<\/p>\n<p>Four years after I was born,<br \/>\nI thought my father was<br \/>\na cologne salesman.<\/p>\n<p>The smell of his suitcase<br \/>\nand sternum<br \/>\nrevealed his love<br \/>\nfor Federation;<br \/>\nhis handwritten poems<br \/>\nin the top left pocket<br \/>\nof his shirt \u2013<br \/>\nhe could barely keep<br \/>\nsecret.<\/p>\n<p>When I was old enough<br \/>\nto learn the function<br \/>\nof hangars, and reach them,<br \/>\nand still young enough<br \/>\nto ask my mother<br \/>\nwhy it snowed<br \/>\nin Caracas, Tehran,<br \/>\nin Havana, <em>Bah\u00eda<br \/>\nde Cochinos;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>when I was too young<br \/>\nto understand<br \/>\nthe sunken face<br \/>\nof my old man<br \/>\nclean-shaved<br \/>\nand wearing a tie \u2013<\/p>\n<p>I looked forward<br \/>\nto his absence.<br \/>\nWhen he disciplined us<br \/>\nwith vexed instructions,<br \/>\ncutting short<br \/>\nour time<br \/>\nto watch cable television.<\/p>\n<p>I played in his wardrobe<br \/>\nwhen he was gone.<\/p>\n<p>The first time<br \/>\nI buttoned my father\u2019s guayabera<br \/>\nover me. I came out<br \/>\nin the living room;<br \/>\nmy mother slumped<br \/>\nin her chair.<\/p>\n<p>She gave me<br \/>\nthe same look<br \/>\nshe had on her face<br \/>\nat airport ARRIVALS.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d like much<br \/>\nto talk about sewing<br \/>\nand my mother\u2019s thread<br \/>\nuntil I die.<br \/>\nBut I swear<br \/>\nthe man I am<br \/>\nin this shirt<br \/>\neats the spaces<br \/>\nof the silence<br \/>\nand sounds<br \/>\nof Gate Announcements.<\/p>\n<p>The years thread<br \/>\nevenly, appear to look<br \/>\nthat way, and fractures<br \/>\nof family life show up<br \/>\nin inevitable rips<br \/>\nI could live with.<\/p>\n<p>I can\u2019t live<br \/>\nwith three-piece suits.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve worn patrimony<br \/>\non the sleeve<br \/>\nfor decades<br \/>\nto my own detriment.<\/p>\n<p>My brothers<br \/>\nask for my wife,<br \/>\nthey ask for more<br \/>\nphotographs<br \/>\nwith children<br \/>\nat home.<\/p>\n<p>When I was abroad,<br \/>\nmy mother wrote<br \/>\nto me:<br \/>\n<em>How is the cold?<br \/>\nWhen do you come back?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>I have more guayaberas folded for you<br \/>\nwhen you are ready.<\/em><\/p>\n<h3>Caracas, 2026<\/h3>\n<p>Lone stars.<\/p>\n<p>You and I<br \/>\nwere not reliving bad dreams<br \/>\nabout earthquakes<br \/>\nin bed.<\/p>\n<p>The ash<br \/>\nfrom the other side<br \/>\nof the world<br \/>\nfell across our eyes.<\/p>\n<p>God,<br \/>\nit was raining fire.<\/p>\n<p>We knew the palaces<br \/>\nand commanders were shaking<br \/>\nas beggars of dawn<br \/>\nprofessed their joy<br \/>\nand softer despair.<\/p>\n<p>The spectrum of tears<br \/>\nare no less material.<\/p>\n<p>Who is next<br \/>\nin this mission?<br \/>\nIt\u2019s been months;<br \/>\nwe\u2019ve pretended a desert strip<br \/>\nfor the dead<br \/>\ndoes not exist.<\/p>\n<p>Leaders<br \/>\nhave gone to conclusions,<br \/>\nbombing sand.<\/p>\n<p>Children practice<br \/>\npedagogies in these theatres,<br \/>\ninjured dolls,<br \/>\ninfinite cruelties.<\/p>\n<p>Aunt Diana\u2019s sound<br \/>\nof crying<br \/>\nwas a woman searching<br \/>\nfor herself<br \/>\nin thin pages of scripture.<\/p>\n<p>Count the dead.<\/p>\n<p>Say a prayer<br \/>\nfor the badly wounded.<\/p>\n<p>How could I forgive<br \/>\nmy country,<br \/>\nmyself,<br \/>\ngoing back to sleep?<\/p>\n<h3>Late Stage Revolutions<\/h3>\n<p>Intermittently<br \/>\nsovereign<br \/>\non the edge<br \/>\nof Empire.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps<br \/>\nwe are a cluster<br \/>\nof thorns<br \/>\nor worse,<br \/>\nBackyard botanica<br \/>\nhung up<br \/>\non entropy.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m tuned in<br \/>\nto co-opted skulls<br \/>\non podiums<br \/>\nand their Washington articulacy \u2013<br \/>\nmaking clear<br \/>\nas day-time strikes<br \/>\non fishing boats,<br \/>\nnone of us<br \/>\nhave been able<br \/>\nto point<br \/>\nto a country<br \/>\nas our own<br \/>\non maps we carry<br \/>\nin our hands.<\/p>\n<p>Headlines flare,<br \/>\nmen straggle<br \/>\nholding gazettes<br \/>\nand bottles of<br \/>\nOld Overholt,<br \/>\nreadying to go<br \/>\nabove and beyond<br \/>\nand shame<br \/>\nSierra Maestra<br \/>\nto their knees.<\/p>\n<p>I cannot<br \/>\nbring God<br \/>\nto our defense.<br \/>\nI\u2019ve only brought<br \/>\nwonder;<br \/>\nBlack halos<br \/>\nand History\u2019s grief<br \/>\nto a rally.<\/p>\n<p>My elder brother\u2019s<br \/>\nname is Fidel.<br \/>\nI\u2019m told<br \/>\nto \u201cNever mind.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I do,<br \/>\nbecause in the space<br \/>\nbetween a breath<br \/>\nand his name,<br \/>\nthe largest arms<br \/>\nshudder<br \/>\ninto existence<br \/>\nand claim<br \/>\nme.<\/p>\n\n\t\t<div class='author-shortcodes'>\n\t\t\t<div class='author-inner'>\n\t\t\t\t<div class='author-info'>\n\t\t\tam\u00edlcar peter sanatan is an interdisciplinary Caribbean artist, educator, and activist. He is from Trinidad and Tobago, currently working between East Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, and Helsinki, Finland. He is the author of two poetry chapbooks: About Kingston (Peekash Press, 2025) and The Black Fl\u00e2neur: Diary of Dizain Poems, Anthropology of Hurt\u00a0\u00a0(Ethel Zine and Micro Press, 2025).\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The years thread<br \/>\nevenly, appear to look<br \/>\nthat way, and fractures<br \/>\nof family life show up<br \/>\nin inevitable rips<br \/>\nI could live with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15102494,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\r\n\r\n{excerpt}\r\n\r\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[309394382,422,728594591],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amilcar-sanatan","category-poetry","category-pree-15","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - 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Before you believe<br \/>\nthose acrid whispers funneling up<br \/>\nfrom the basement of your mind<br \/>\nhissing that you are unloved and unlovable,<br \/>\na burden and insufferable,<br \/>\nroll your eyes back into time<br \/>\nand look for where the dead body is buried<\/p>\n<p>Which sapling of you was hacked down<br \/>\nbefore reaching the sun<br \/>\nbecause you were too clear of a mirror?<\/p>\n<p>Whose fear became an axe<br \/>\nand hacked you to pieces<br \/>\nbefore you could fully unfurl?<\/p>\n<p>Our composted selves<br \/>\nrelease a noxious fog<br \/>\nbending our vision into<br \/>\nfunhouse mirrors<\/p>\n<p>It’s time now to turn the soil<br \/>\ninto a garden<\/p>\n<h3>Re-member You<\/h3>\n<p>The holes in you that you can\u2019t see<br \/>\nbecome a cliff you fall over into despair<br \/>\na puddle you walk through into resentment<br \/>\na fire you stumble through into rage<br \/>\nand you wreck yourself walking through the dark<br \/>\nlooking for a way that ends in definite answers<br \/>\nthe why, the how of this body<\/p>\n<p>If only the echo voice from red dirt hills,<br \/>\ncool springs, and spinning masquerades<br \/>\ncould reach your ear just to say,<br \/>\n\u201cGo that way\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But you are an ocean away<br \/>\nand generations deep into forgetfulness<br \/>\nthe absence of, the longing for,<br \/>\na home you never knew<br \/>\na purpose, a reason to be<br \/>\nis the anchor you need to stay in this life<br \/>\nand rise beyond being<\/p>\n<p>somebody\u2019s little helper<\/p>\n<p>The map to the missing parts of you<br \/>\nis the axe you need to build a path for your children<br \/>\nshore them up into a sturdy life<br \/>\nwith direction and purpose<\/p>\n<p>But you can only stand still and pretend you don\u2019t feel<br \/>\nthe absence of something you can\u2019t name<br \/>\nand you feed those holes with food\u00a0\u00a0 busy \u00a0\u00a0angry<br \/>\nbecause it feels useful,<br \/>\nfeasts on the time<\/p>\n<p>But until you step inside those voids,<br \/>\nyou won\u2019t know how to heal them shut<\/p>\n<p>Just listen<\/p>\n<p>The wind has a story<br \/>\nthe candle paints a picture<br \/>\nthe water remembers for you<\/p>\n<p>You will<br \/>\nre-member<br \/>\nyou<\/p>\n\n\t\t<div class='author-shortcodes'>\n\t\t\t<div class='author-inner'>\n\t\t\t\t<div class='author-info'>\n\t\t\tKeisha-Gaye Anderson is an award-winning poet, author, visual artist, and communications strategist. Her books include Everything Is Necessary, Gathering the Waters, A Spell for Living, and Indomitable (forthcoming 2027). Keisha’s writing has been widely published, appearing in Academy of American Poets, Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships and\/or grants from NY Foundation for the Arts, NY State Council on the Arts, Martha\u2019s Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing, and Laundromat Project. She was a VONA and Callaloo fellow, and a Brooklyn Public Library Artist in Residence. Keisha began her career in production for PBS, CBS, and NHK, and as a writer for magazines like Black Enterprise, Psychology Today, and Teen People. Her art has been exhibited widely, and she was recently awarded the Larry Weekes Backroom Gallery Residency. Keisha lectures in English at The City University of New York and Poets House, and leads writing workshops internationally. Learn more at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.keishagaye.ink\" rel=\"nofollow\">http:\/\/www.keishagaye.ink<\/a>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The holes in you that you can\u2019t see<br \/>\nbecome a cliff you fall over into despair<br \/>\na puddle you walk through into resentment<br \/>\na fire you stumble through into rage<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15102494,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\r\n\r\n{excerpt}\r\n\r\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[728594624,422,728594591],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-keisha-gaye-anderson","category-poetry","category-pree-15","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Gyal; Re-member You - PREE<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/09\/03\/11844\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Gyal; Re-member You - PREE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The holes in you that you can\u2019t see become a cliff you fall over into despair a puddle you walk through into resentment a fire you stumble through into rage\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/09\/03\/11844\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"PREE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-09-03T17:01:54+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-09-03T18:10:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"ap\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"ap\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/preelit.com\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/03\\\/11844\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/preelit.com\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/03\\\/11844\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"ap\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/preelit.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/4518f338ddbd9b8905be3abd07c656f1\"},\"headline\":\"Gyal; 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the PREE 15 Awards Go to…"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>1st Place<\/h2>\n<p>CHIDERA UDOCHUKWU-NDUKA for <a href=\"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/13\/nothing-moves-in-straight-lines\/\">Nothing Moves in Straight Lines<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"11822\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/30\/and-the-pree-15-awards-go-to\/contest-posters_2\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/contest-posters_2.png?fit=1000%2C1249&ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"1000,1249\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0","alt":""}\" data-image-title=\"contest posters_2\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/contest-posters_2.png?fit=820%2C1024&ssl=1\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-11822\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/contest-posters_2.png?resize=820%2C1024&ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"820\" height=\"1024\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/contest-posters_2.png?resize=820%2C1024&ssl=1 820w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/contest-posters_2.png?resize=240%2C300&ssl=1 240w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/contest-posters_2.png?resize=768%2C959&ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/contest-posters_2.png?resize=600%2C749&ssl=1 600w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/contest-posters_2.png?w=1000&ssl=1 1000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px\" \/><\/p>\n<h2>2nd Place<\/h2>\n<p>GEORGIO RUSSELL for <a href=\"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/12\/through-babylon-and-other-poems\/\">Through Babylon and Other Poems<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"11823\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/30\/and-the-pree-15-awards-go-to\/contest-posters_3\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/contest-posters_3.png?fit=1000%2C1249&ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"1000,1249\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0","alt":""}\" data-image-title=\"contest posters_3\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/contest-posters_3.png?fit=820%2C1024&ssl=1\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-11823\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/contest-posters_3.png?resize=820%2C1024&ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"820\" height=\"1024\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/contest-posters_3.png?resize=820%2C1024&ssl=1 820w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/contest-posters_3.png?resize=240%2C300&ssl=1 240w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/contest-posters_3.png?resize=768%2C959&ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/contest-posters_3.png?resize=600%2C749&ssl=1 600w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/contest-posters_3.png?w=1000&ssl=1 1000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px\" \/><\/p>\n<h2>3rd Place<\/h2>\n<p>KEVIN JARED HOSEIN for <a href=\"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/17\/continuity\/\">Continuity<\/a><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"color: #ffffff;\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"11824\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/30\/and-the-pree-15-awards-go-to\/contest-posters_4-updated\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/contest-posters_4-updated.png?fit=1000%2C1249&ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"1000,1249\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0","alt":""}\" data-image-title=\"contest posters_4 updated\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/contest-posters_4-updated.png?fit=820%2C1024&ssl=1\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-11824\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/contest-posters_4-updated.png?resize=820%2C1024&ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"820\" height=\"1024\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/contest-posters_4-updated.png?resize=820%2C1024&ssl=1 820w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/contest-posters_4-updated.png?resize=240%2C300&ssl=1 240w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/contest-posters_4-updated.png?resize=768%2C959&ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/contest-posters_4-updated.png?resize=600%2C749&ssl=1 600w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/contest-posters_4-updated.png?w=1000&ssl=1 1000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px\" \/>ddddddd<\/span><\/h3>\n<h3>Honourable Mention<\/h3>\n<p>FAITH\u00a0EGWUCHUKWU for <a href=\"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/26\/the-price-of-a-full-gele\/\">The Price of a Full Gele<\/a><\/p>\n<h1><\/h1>\n<h1>A Note from our Judge, Richard Georges<\/h1>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">\n<p>As PREE expands its borders to welcome contributions from the Global South, so too do the concerns of the entries expand, not just across the globe, but also in scope, intent, and ambition. The shortlist cut across genres, as indicated by my final selection of winners \u2013 one suite of poems, a short story, and a lyric essay \u2013 and as a previous contributor to this publication, as well as an editor and organiser so aware of the important work of platforming creative work in these spaces from this place, I was immensely proud of my privilege to perform this duty. My (blind) reading over the past few weeks compiled an impressive and encouraging collection of writing rich with the sort of passion to provoke, to ask more questions rather than assume the answers, to really explore the implications of the themes included in the call of the editors.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, the burden of the reader (like the writer) is to make choices. To decide which of the shortlisted entries were deserving of an award, and grimly, which were not. I will take an indulgence in this judge\u2019s note to make clear that what I have done cannot be seen as an objective exercise. Perhaps you may find in this issue another voice you deem more lucid or elegant. For what it\u2019s worth, I have valued here the craft of the line, the feeling that the writer has been intentional in the choices they have made, that they are discovering, like us, that they do not have all the answers, that sometimes the most sacred power held by the vulnerable is the power to ask a question.<\/p>\n<p>One such question arrives in the entry I have selected for honourable mention. In \u2018The Price of a Full Gele\u2019, Faith Egwuchukwu ponders the many and varied erasures that are demanded of women in exchange for the social and religious acceptance symbolised by the iconic headwrap. To do so, the writer teleports us to a moment in her youth amidst the pews of a charismatic church where the\u00a0particular vulnerability\u00a0of a fellow worshipper brings the social precarity of her entire gender into focus.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Continuity\u2019 by Kevin Jared Hosein, a stirring piece of speculative fiction, is third. This is a story where the most compelling parts of it are not the popular sci-fi trope of a space ark escaping the doomed Earth, but rather how chillingly familiar the bureaucracy of exclusion becomes. One by one, all those great multinational organisations the downtrodden nations of the world look to for justice (climate, social, or political) fail us, just as they continue to do now. But what was most beautiful here is how the Caribbean somehow always makes space for itself, even when “there is no space left in the story of the wider world”, even then “the kiskadees are still singing” in the face of apocalypse. After all, as the narrator reminds us \u2013 “nothing can exist by itself”.<\/p>\n<p>The poet Georgio Russell is a startling new voice, and the poems that earned him second place betray an assurance and confidence of craft. Russell\u2019s imagistic approach does not neglect the nuances of sound, with musically alliterative passages such as in \u2018Through Babylon\u2019, “alarm\/and lecture in her dialect, the hasty\/summary of blood spilled before”. I do not wish to do him the disservice of comparison, but in a time that celebrates at once the obvious didactics as well as unapproachable opaqueness, Russell is a refreshing new writer. A lyricist delighting in the language of the everyday.<\/p>\n<h1><\/h1>\n<div>My selection for first place, however, goes to \u2018Nothing Moves in Straight Lines\u2019 by Chidera Udochukwu-Nduka. The essay is a wonderfully controlled piece that finds the intersections between the doodles of the writer\u2019s father, her own migration as a child, Vodun cosmology and Spiralism, and the greater diasporic connections between the island and her own Igbo identity. The essay spans the globe and time and eventually brings the writer to Haiti herself. Ultimately, the shape of the spiral encourages something akin to Brathwaite\u2019s tidalectics, a circling reminiscent of the going and coming and back and forth of the ocean between Lagos and Jacmel, and even Toronto.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<h1><\/h1>\n<p> <\/p>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">\n<p><strong>Richard Georges is the first Virgin Islands Poet Laureate (2020) and the author of three collections of poetry, as well as essays and fiction. His most recent collection, <a href=\"https:\/\/richardgeorges.com\/epiphaneia\" target=\"\">Epiphaneia<\/a> (2019), won the <em>2020 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature<\/em>. His first debut, <a href=\"https:\/\/richardgeorges.com\/make-us-all-islands\" target=\"\">Make Us All Islands<\/a> (2017), was shortlisted for the <em>Forward Prize for Best First Collection<\/em> and his second book, <a href=\"https:\/\/richardgeorges.com\/giant\" target=\"\">Giant<\/a> (2018), was highly commended by the <em>Forward Prizes<\/em> and longlisted for the <em>OCM Bocas Prize<\/em>. His next collection of poems, <em>Shore\/Lines <\/em>(2027), is forthcoming from Peepal Tree Press in the UK and Akashic Books in the US.<br \/>\n<\/strong><strong>A recipient of a Fellowship from the Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Study, and a Pushcart Prize nominee, Richard holds a PhD in Critical and Creative Writing from the University of Sussex, and is a Founding Editor of <em>Moko<\/em>. He currently serves as the seventh president of H. Lavity Stoutt Community College in Tortola. Richard is working on a novel and is represented by <a href=\"https:\/\/elisedillsworthagency.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Elise Dillsworth<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As PREE expands its borders to welcome contributions from the Global South, so too do the concerns of the entries expand, not just across the globe, but also in scope, intent, and ambition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15102494,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\r\n\r\n{excerpt}\r\n\r\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[728594591,715724496,253566025],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pree-15","category-pree-news","category-richard-georges","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - 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of\u00a0 St. Lazzar"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">SHORTLISTED<\/span><\/p>\n<p>IDE THOMPSON<\/p>\n<h3>Ballad of\u00a0 St. Lazzar, Jonsa of Boyd Road and He Nine Angel<\/h3>\n<p>Take up your walking cane and follow St. Lazzy,<br \/>\nOh take up your walking cane and come follow<br \/>\nBrother Lazzy, don\u2019t mind what your preacher<br \/>\nsay, if you hear him groaning, go and follow<br \/>\nSt. Lazzy, e\u2019 get you through.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, old Lazzy, were it that you really<br \/>\nreally dead, or just covered in sore,<br \/>\ncovered in the grey-ash, a whiteness<br \/>\ncovered over ya head where the shekinah was to be mounted<br \/>\ncovered and unable to be enthroned<br \/>\ncovered and unable to see for your voyage<br \/>\nBlessed Jonsa of Lazzar, oh Saint Resurrector<br \/>\nShipwright of all these scuttle vessel<br \/>\nMaster shipwright of this carenage<br \/>\nof islands, throne of the silver tongue,<br \/>\nbeat a drum in these small hours,<br \/>\nbeat your rhythm good.<\/p>\n<p>Oh Brother Lazzy,<br \/>\nwith your 9 divine<br \/>\npotcake that follow in your wake<br \/>\nwe sing they name<br \/>\nBig Dog and Little Dog: that does lick we wounds for healing,<br \/>\nBlacky and White-White: who does scare the sickness from we door,<br \/>\nMilo and Dori: for remembering the dead,<br \/>\nThree leg and No-eye: they bless we broken body and<br \/>\nPrecious: to guide us gently, on we last travel home.<\/p>\n<p>this is how you teach us to live:<br \/>\ndrinking from the pump by St. Francis & Joseph,<br \/>\npicking mango and seagrapes on Poitier Ave,<br \/>\nwashing weself in the old gully in the bush,<br \/>\nbegging alms from Dirties and the Bush Cook,<br \/>\nnapping under the poinciana tree on the hill.<\/p>\n<p>Oh my Lazzy, Sweet Brother Lazzy<br \/>\npatron of these road walkers<br \/>\nkeepers of we bad-knee, stiff-leg, dim-eye people<br \/>\nOh Holy Watcher over the infirm, Papa Lazzy,<br \/>\nPapa Leggba, silver on your head like rope<br \/>\nthick and hanging Old Man\u2019s Beard<br \/>\nin the trees stretching to the everlasting<br \/>\nlife of the resurrection in these bodies.<\/p>\n\n\t\t<div class='author-shortcodes'>\n\t\t\t<div class='author-inner'>\n\t\t\t\t<div class='author-info'>\n\t\t\tIde Amari Thompson (he\/they) is a Black and Queer Caribbean writer from Nassau, Bahamas. They have an MFA in poetry from UMass Amherst and are an English MA-PhD student at Penn State. They were a McCormack Reading Fellow 2024-2025 (formerly Tin House), a 2026 runner-up for the Plentitudes poetry prize judged by Latif Askia Ba, a 2025 Visiting Teaching Artist in the Forms & Features Workshop series organized by the Poetry Foundation and have had their work supported by a scholarship from Bread Loaf. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Caribbean Quarterly, SX Salon, Prairie Schooner, POETRY, among others.\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>this is how you teach us to live:<br \/>\ndrinking from the pump by St. Francis & Joseph,<br \/>\npicking mango and seagrapes on Poitier Ave,<br \/>\nwashing weself in the old gully in the bush…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15102494,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\r\n\r\n{excerpt}\r\n\r\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[653884091,422,728594591,728594599],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ide-thompson","category-poetry","category-pree-15","category-shortlisted","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - 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I held onto my phone tightly because I’d been robbed there before. A boy who looked no older than eight had snatched my phone from my back pocket and disappeared into the crowd before I could give chase. Ikeja Underbridge always smelled like piss. Men would piss on the thick concrete pillars that held up the bridge, putting back the smell of urine that had been washed away by rain.<\/p>\n<p>Itopa was telling off a police officer trying to extort him. The officer had a pockmarked face.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have shown you everything you asked for. Why are you still detaining me?\u201d Itopa asked the policeman.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>Oga I say make you come down from that moto! Come down!<\/em>\u201d The policeman yelled.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo,\u201d said Itopa. He was tapping on the steering wheel with his index finger. I could tell he was trying to rein in his anger. The policeman had a gun, an AK-47 he wore across his body with a dirty sling. Surely that was enough to persuade anyone to comply with the officer. But Itopa didn’t get out of his car. He was so light-skinned his face was beginning to turn red in anger. Green veins crisscrossed the length of his arms as he tightened his grip on the steering wheel. A small crowd had gathered, and they were yelling entreaties at both the policeman and Itopa.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>Fine man, do as the police talk.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>Yellow, give am <\/em><em>\u20a6<\/em><em>200 make e dey go. Na so dem dey do. Dem no get shame.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>Oga police, dis man no do anytin, leave am!<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Most of the women acknowledged his \u2018fineness\u2019 and \u2018yellow skin\u2019 as if to say he was too handsome, too light-skinned to be murdered by a policeman. Being light-skinned in Nigeria automatically conferred beauty on a person. For dark skin to be beautiful, it had to be flawless. But Itopa wasn’t just light-skinned; he was also beautiful.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>Oga police, this fine man no like wahala. No be everybody una go stress,<\/em>\u201d a woman with a baby strapped to her back said.<\/p>\n<p>Overwhelmed, the policeman gave in to the crowd. \u201c<em>You go still jam who pass you. Because you be lawyer, you tink say you fit do anyhow,<\/em>\u201d he said to save face. He knew he had lost. Itopa waved at the small crowd and said, “<em>Thank you o<\/em>,\u201d in that Nigerian way that showed both camaraderie and gratitude to a bunch of strangers you’re never likely to meet again.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI’m going to Lekki. If anyone is going that way, please hop in and let me drop you off.\u201d This caused a small frenzy. Many people were headed that way. I forced my way into the front seat, elbowing many men with sweat patches around their armpits. Months of hustling to get into buses paid off. Before I could close the front passenger door, four people were already in the backseat.<\/p>\n<p>The people at the back \u2014 two middle-aged women with badly bleached, sunburnt faces, and two men \u2014 a young man wearing thick glasses, and the other, a man old enough to be called old \u2014 praised his courage.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>Oga, you get mind o. Na man you be<\/em>!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I said nothing. He looked at me. I stared back, fighting the urge to look away first. Up close, he was even more beautiful. His eyes were dark brown, like rich soil after rain. His black hair was curly, not kinky like a typical Afro. He dropped the people at the back off at different bus stops to effusive \u201cthank you sirs\u201d and \u201cGod bless you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhere are you going?\u201d he asked when it was just the two of us left in the car.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLekki Conservation Centre. You can drop me off here if you aren’t going that far. Thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon’t worry. I’ll drive you there,\u201d he said with an easy smile. \u201cYou’re so reserved. What is your name?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAmoto.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>“Oh my God! <em>Anebira uvi ni?<\/em>” His smile grew bigger, stretching his face taut. \u201cYou’re my brother! My name is Itopa.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A smile played on his lips every time he looked at me. He talked freely and took my phone number. He said we ought to look out for each other in Lagos. When he dropped me off at LCC, he waved at me enthusiastically as if we had known each other our entire lives.<\/p>\n<h3>II<\/h3>\n<p>I would love to say that our love caught and spread quickly, that we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. That we tore off each other’s clothes and made love like animals in heat. But that wasn’t what happened. Love crept up on us slowly, and when we found out, we’d already been consumed. It wasn’t chaotic. It felt like a soft wool cardigan on a cold day, like butter slowly melting into warm bread. It was comfortable.<\/p>\n<p>One sunny Saturday, Itopa invited me to brunch for the first time. I tasted the word \u201cbrunch,\u201d rolled it over in my mouth and smiled. Brunch was for people who were doing well, for people whose lives weren’t a daily struggle.<\/p>\n<p>Itopa was an energy lawyer at Banwo & Ighodalo, a senior associate. He was part of the team that brokered an important energy deal with Siemens a few years ago. He was thirty, a rising star. I was a civil engineering graduate working as a cashier at First Bank. He made jokes about engineers \u00a0working in banks. He didn’t know that I couldn’t get an engineering job in Lagos and that I had bribed the local branch manager to get the placement at First Bank. People like Itopa had never had to beg. They took what was rightfully theirs. His intelligence and beauty made sure of it as did his wealth. He had grown up privileged, and had the haughty affect of a man used to things going his way. It was why he could argue with a policeman who had a gun.<\/p>\n<p>Brunch was at the Radisson Blu Hotel. The hotel stood out, as if aware of how luxurious it was. Itopa wore a white shirt and navy-blue shorts that exposed his hairy legs. His feet were fitted snugly into white Nike sneakers. He looked like one of those rich white men on golf courses in Hollywood movies. He took off his sunglasses and shook my hand when I stepped into the hotel lobby. He\u2019d been waiting for me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWelcome, Amoto. <em>Anya ru se.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The sky that Saturday was vacant, a stunning bright blue. We sat outside, under an awning. Our table was full of food in elegant bowls and platters: seafood, rice, sauces with foreign names, crispy fried chicken, a cheeseboard with several cheeses, some fruit, and two bottles of dry white wine.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt’s too early for red wine,\u201d Itopa said as we sat down.<\/p>\n<p>I tried everything. I hated the feta cheese. The pasta dish was so good that I made Itopa order some for me to take home. He said it was farfalle pasta with mushrooms and pesto. He told me about his work and I listened. I told him that I’d just been promoted. \u201cCongratulations!\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>III<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Itopa was a whirlwind when he was working. He was cutthroat and efficient. He took calls in Ubers, spoke with confidence to his colleagues and superiors when on the phone with them. But when he switched off from work, he was present with me.<\/p>\n<p>Our second date found us at the Oriental Hotel for dinner. The soft yellow lighting of the restaurant reflected off Itopa making his skin radiant. That night, many women around us tried to catch his eye. Some even walked to our table to greet him. I knew I was lucky then. Lucky that he chose me when he could have anyone he wanted.<\/p>\n<p>Itopa stroked his beard when he was nervous or distracted. Sometimes, he’d pull hard enough to pull out a strand of hair. His beard had a slight wave, as though windswept but only halfway.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen did you find out?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFind out what?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat you were different,\u201d I said and looked away. I knew I shouldn’t be prying.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen I was six? Seven? I don’t remember, but I’ve always known.\u201d He shrugged. \u201cWhat about you?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen I hit puberty. I wanted to kiss a boy \u2014 Joseph \u2014 in my class. I wrote him a love letter. It didn’t end well.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat happened?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI got beaten by a group of boys who saw the letter.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s sad,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>I waved it away. \u201cIt was a long time ago.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For a while, we said nothing. We sat in comfortable silence and ate our food.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI just bought a country home in Ihima,\u201d Itopa said, breaking the silence. \u201cI’m going to spend my 20-day leave there. You should come with me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I froze. There was something unbelievable about a 30-year-old man buying a country home. The people who owned country homes were old and bald with massive potbellies.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou bought a country home?\u201d I asked, astonished.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYup. You should see your face,\u201d he laughed.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><strong>IV<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>The house in Ihima looked nothing like I imagined it would. It was a four-bedroom bungalow painted a bright yellow. The yellow contrasted with the army green roof. It stood out. It called attention to itself. Pink bougainvillea crawled over the short fence, adding even more color. Neat hedges of ixora encircled the house, as though trapping in all the beauty, preventing it from spilling out. Young lemon trees, years away from fruiting, perfumed the air.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBabe, do you like it?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDo I like it?\u201d I repeated. \u201cThis is the most beautiful house I have ever seen, and I haven’t seen inside yet. It’s almost as beautiful as you. Almost, but not quite.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I leaned in for a hug, kissed him twice on his forehead, and led him to the door. \u201cLet’s see if it is as gorgeous inside.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI aim to please,\u201d said Itopa.<\/p>\n<p>There was an easy languidness about Ihima. The village was like an old man riding a bicycle: slow and content. The air was clean and smelled like nature, unlike the polluted air in Lagos, which smelled of rotting garbage and gutter water. At dawn, several shrill voices called out to people to buy their wares. It tore the still fabric of the morning and set the day in motion.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>Buy fresh bread!<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>Buy kerozin!<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The rurality amused Itopa. He’d lived in abundance for so long he’d forgotten that people still cooked with kerosene and firewood. If I wasn\u2019t already enamored of him, I would find him out of touch. He was a member of the upper class who\u2019d forgotten that people beneath his social class lived full lives. The dirt road paths in Ihima were perfect for casual evening walks with a lover. The singing of birds was music. Even the croaking of frogs and the chirping of crickets at night weren’t annoying.<\/p>\n<p>Late one night, lying on his back on the balcony, he called out. \u201cBabe, come and see.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSee what?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>“Look!” he pointed up.<\/p>\n<p>I looked up. \u201cWhat am I supposed to be looking at?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe sky. Isn’t it marvelous? All those stars dotting the night sky, sparkling.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think you mean \u2018twinkling.\u2019 Stars twinkle. They don’t sparkle. \u2018Twinkle twinkle little star,\u2019\u2019 I said as I lay on my back too, next to him. \u201cYeah, it\u2019s beautiful. But they’re almost always there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat’s the point. We take the beauty for granted because it’s always there,\u201d he explained, gesturing with his hands. \u201cA shooting star is shooting across the sky. Make a wish,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat are you? Seven? This is real life, not a Disney cartoon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMake a wish anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wish that this happiness never fades. I wish \u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He pressed a finger to my mouth and said, \u201cA wish. One wish.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I turned around, stomach down and body propped up by my elbows so that I looked right into his eyes, which appeared black in the moonlight, and said, \u201cI love you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI love you too, Amoto, more than you’ll ever know.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I lay my head on his hairy chest. The world was perfect. Everything was well.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>V<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>I had only requested a three-day leave from work. Those three days plus the weekend were supposed to be enough. I didn’t know that I’d love Ihima as much as I did. I didn’t know that I would be taking evening walks with my lover or that stargazing would become something I looked forward to. I didn’t go back to Lagos when my leave expired. I stayed all twenty days with him, unbothered about my future because the present made me happy, happier than anyone had the right to be.<\/p>\n<p>We took long walks and hiked hilly trails.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"11616\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/19\/touching-ground\/mushroom-bush\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/mushroom-bush.jpeg?fit=4032%2C3024&ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"4032,3024\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{"aperture":"1.6","credit":"","camera":"iPhone 13","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1771675646","copyright":"","focal_length":"5.1","iso":"50","shutter_speed":"0.00033704078193461","title":"","orientation":"1","alt":""}\" data-image-title=\"mushroom bush\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/mushroom-bush.jpeg?fit=1024%2C768&ssl=1\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-11616\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/mushroom-bush.jpeg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/mushroom-bush.jpeg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/mushroom-bush.jpeg?resize=300%2C225&ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/mushroom-bush.jpeg?resize=768%2C576&ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/mushroom-bush.jpeg?resize=1536%2C1152&ssl=1 1536w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/mushroom-bush.jpeg?resize=2048%2C1536&ssl=1 2048w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/mushroom-bush.jpeg?resize=1080%2C810&ssl=1 1080w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/mushroom-bush.jpeg?resize=600%2C450&ssl=1 600w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/mushroom-bush.jpeg?w=2160&ssl=1 2160w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/mushroom-bush.jpeg?w=3240&ssl=1 3240w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>On one of those walks, we hiked a small hill. When we got to the top, we could see the entire village. Most of the roofs were brown and rusty. A few modern houses had reflective aluminum roofs. Our shirts were soaked through with sweat. Itopa pulled the stopper off his water bottle and drank from it, spilling some water.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUgh, even when you’re sweaty and spilling water down your chin, you’re still hot. It’s not fair,\u201d I said with mock disgust.<\/p>\n<p>He laughed. \u201cI can’t help it. I was born this way.\u201d He winked at me.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>VI<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>I befriended an old man who lived opposite our house in Ihima. He had dark age spots on his face. He was always outside during the day, sitting by his sewing machine. He was one of those men that tailoring had left behind, forgotten like bicycles when motorcycles became the rage. He’d learned how to sew in the late sixties when the quality of the fabric was more important than the style. When style meant having room to maneuver, to dance without being hindered.<\/p>\n<p>Every morning, he brought out his old sewing machine and oiled it slowly, deliberately. He’d then sit under the cashew tree in front of his house and wait for people to bring him clothes to sew. Most days, no one brought him clothes. Sometimes, people whose zippers and buttons needed fixing brought him clothes to mend. But he was outside every morning, measuring tape around his neck, waiting for business. The few times he had something to sew, he pedaled with purpose, whistled to himself, and stopped momentarily to rub out the pain in his arthritic hands. Everyone called him Papa.<\/p>\n<p>Itopa, too, befriended a child, a boy named Ihima, like the village. They’d met by chance. The boy had run into our house screaming, begging for mercy, his mother hot on his heels, cane in hand. His mother stood at the door and yelled at him to come out of Brother Yellow’s house before he broke something expensive. Itopa promised to talk some sense into him. The mother, placated, left.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy are you hell-bent on terrorizing your mother?\u201d Itopa asked the boy in English. He’d stopped crying, and his tears had dried, leaving white, salty lines on his face.<\/p>\n<p>Confused, the boy said, \u201cNo, sah.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo? What did you do?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI go play ball in the field, sah.\u201d He was fidgety, unsure of how to behave.<\/p>\n<p>Ihima somehow always ended up at the village’s dusty football field when he was supposed to be running errands. He liked the sound of the wind as it whooshed past him. He narrated his escapades on the field to Itopa in excited, high-pitched, broken English.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou cannot always play football when you like. Tell you something, we can go to the field together, you and me. I’ll ask your mother, but then you must run all your errands before we go. How’s that?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ihima’s face lit up. \u201cYes, sah!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Itopa had won the entire village over before we left on the twentieth day. He was Brother Yellow. Even older women called him Brother Yellow. I was the friend of Brother Yellow. People liked me because they loved him. Only Papa called each of us by name.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAmoto, what are you and Itopa?\u201d Papa asked one evening. We were alone. Itopa was at home, napping.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are friends. We’ve been friends for a while,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOkay,\u201d he said. He looked like he knew more but chose to stay quiet. Later, he said, \u201cTake care of him. He takes such good care of you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI will,\u201d I promised.<\/p>\n<h3>VII<\/h3>\n<p>The illness started as something innocuous. We’d moved back to Lagos. I was living with him in his apartment, looking for a new job because I\u2019d been fired from my old one. I still cannot believe that I got fired because of my love for a man. A job that I had prayed to get, that I had bribed to get. I would have judged anyone else for abandoning their source of livelihood for a man.<\/p>\n<p>Itopa\u2019s illness started as a slight wheezing after we made love.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou should get that wheezing checked,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt’s nothing, babe. Just a sore throat.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The wheezing progressed into a wet cough the next day. He drove himself to the hospital that evening and called to tell me that he had been admitted.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat did they say is wrong with you?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey think I have pneumonia, but they’re running tests to confirm. I’ll be back home soon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDo you want me to bring you anything from the house?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes, bring my comforter.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When I got to the hospital, he was in good spirits. His coworkers who came to visit were on their way out. The heels of their shoes clicked on the hospital floor. They looked important in their tailored suits and shiny shoes. They left several hampers filled with fruits and candy and get-well-soon cards. The antibiotics he was given seemed to be working. But he got worse that night. He coughed and coughed until he coughed up blood. And wheezed. And then hiccupped. The doctors had to hook him up to a respirator to help him breathe.<\/p>\n<p>Itopa died on his seventh day in the hospital.<\/p>\n<p>It was almost immoral for something as trivial as hiccups to take him. The doctor said there were underlying causes and followed it up with a bunch of medical jargon about peripheral pathways and mid-brain modulation. But it was hiccups that took him. I saw it. I watched outside, through a rectangular glass window, helpless, chewing my fingers as he hiccupped and hiccupped his life away.<\/p>\n<h3>VIII<\/h3>\n<p><strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>The aftermath of a death is a surreal thing. One moment, Itopa\u2019s room was crowded with doctors trying to save his life, and the next moment, they were heading toward the door, shoulders slouched, as if to say \u201cwe have lost another battle.\u201d I wanted to yell at them, to tell them to go back and try harder. But I didn\u2019t. I accepted the sympathetic pats they gave me on the back. The consultant, a man with a grey beard and kind eyes, came out last and officially announced his death to me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am so sorry,\u201d he said. \u201cWe lost him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I nodded. I didn\u2019t know what to say.<br \/>\n\u201cIs he your brother?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, he is\u2026was my friend. He was my best friend.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am sorry for your loss. You should call his family. So that they can claim his body and start making arrangements for his funeral.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Of course, his family. I was the person who loved him the most in the world and I have just been demoted. I couldn\u2019t tell this sweet doctor that he was my lover, nor could I tell his mother when I called her to inform her about her son\u2019s death. Itopa loved his mother. He looked like her. She\u2019d raised him alone after she left his father, whom Itopa had described as a charismatic philanderer. \u201cMy father can charm <em>anything<\/em> out of their pants,\u201d he\u2019d said. It was his mother he spoke to often. Itopa said she\u2019d cried when he came out to her when he was sixteen and begged him not to tell anyone until his affliction passed. They\u2019d fought over it. His mother pretended not to know that her son was gay and she kept trying to set him up with a \u201cnice girl\u201d he could start a family with.<\/p>\n<p>Their relationship fascinated me. They loved each other but also somehow tolerated each other, as though each thought of the other as unreasonable. Even though Itopa told his mother that I was his lover, she only ever referred to me as her son\u2019s friend. \u201cGreet your friend,\u201d she\u2019d say at the end of their calls in a tone that was perfunctory and devoid of seriousness. I dreaded having to tell her that her son was dead. I dreaded having to meet her too. I called her on Itopa\u2019s phone. I kept my voice even. I listened to her yelp of disbelief and her firm assertion that what I was saying was a lie, that her son couldn\u2019t possibly be dead. I stayed on the line as she wailed. I listened and said nothing when she asked if I killed him because I wanted his money.<\/p>\n<p>I briefly considered writing a letter and giving it to the consultant, but I decided not to. Only Itopa\u2019s mother knew that he was gay. I knew she would want to protect his image. So I stayed.<\/p>\n<p>She arrived with five other people \u2014 three men and two women \u2014 in sleek black SUVs. One of the men was Itopa\u2019s father. He looked like a weathered version of the picture Itopa had of him. He shook my hand firmly and asked me how I was doing. He had a Cockney accent. Itopa never told me his father lives in England. The other women were Itopa\u2019s older sisters and I assumed the other men were their husbands.<\/p>\n<p>I explained again how what killed him began as a cough. They spoke with the doctor and cried over his body at the morgue. I stood away from them, lonely in my grief. I told them about the house in Ihima. It pained me that they would never know about the magical days I had spent in that village with Itopa. I wondered briefly if there was a cosmic shift that let Papa, and Ihima, the child Itopa befriended, know that he was dead. The child was too young to comprehend death but Papa would know that I had failed at taking care of Itopa. I had let him die. I also gave them Itopa\u2019s key to the apartment in Lagos. His father\u2019s brows creased with suspicion.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou say you\u2019re just his friend?\u201d he asked. \u201cHow do you know so much about our Itopa?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I started to lie but stopped. \u201cWe were a little more than friends,\u201d I said. \u201cHe was my boyfriend, my lover. I lived with him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI see,\u201d he said. He wiped his brows with his handkerchief even though he wasn\u2019t sweating. The visitors\u2019 room was air-conditioned.<\/p>\n<p>My heart was threatening to pound its way out of my chest but I continued speaking. \u201cHe is the best thing that ever happened to me. He is the smartest man I know.\u201d I didn\u2019t realize I was speaking of him in the present tense, as if he wasn\u2019t dead.<\/p>\n<p>His mother started to cry. Itopa\u2019s sisters hugged her and his father clustered with his sons-in-law to whisper. I knew it was time to leave. At the door, I asked if I could attend his funeral, and one of the men said he\u2019d let me know. I knew he wouldn\u2019t but I was grateful that he didn\u2019t say no. I headed back to the apartment in Lagos and began to pack my things. The apartment wasn\u2019t mine to keep even though he would have wanted me to keep it. Already, I miss his smile, the way his upper lip curled upward. I miss how he stuck his tongue out like a child when he was thinking. I miss his touch \u2014 warm, strong, and sure \u2014 on my body. I miss, most of all, his dry humor.<\/p>\n<h3>IX<\/h3>\n<p>I lie down on the balcony and look up. What if stars are dead relatives, dead lovers, dead children looking down at us from heaven? What if my Itopa had ascended, twinkling for me and everyone he loved? He’d be the brightest star. I search for the brightest star, hoping to catch a glimpse of Itopa but I’m not sure which star is the brightest. I close my eyes and imagine he is here with me.<\/p>\n\n\t\t<div class='author-shortcodes'>\n\t\t\t<div class='author-inner'>\n\t\t\t\t<div class='author-info'>\n\t\t\tRaheem Omeiza is a Nigerian writer whose work examines class, grief, moral anxieties, and the emotional lives of ordinary people. He was a finalist for the 2022 Afritondo Short Story Prize. His work has appeared in Afritondo, The Forge, Isele, Bombay Lit Mag, Lolwe, and elsewhere.\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One sunny Saturday, Itopa invited me to brunch for the first time. I tasted the word \u201cbrunch,\u201d rolled it over in my mouth and smiled. Brunch was for people who were doing well, for people whose lives weren’t a daily struggle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15102494,"featured_media":11616,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\r\n\r\n{excerpt}\r\n\r\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1747,728594591,728594621],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","category-pree-15","category-raheem-omeiza","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Stargazing - PREE<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/30\/stargazing\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Stargazing - PREE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"One sunny Saturday, Itopa invited me to brunch for the first time. 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Siempre vuelvo [I Always Return], 1994<\/p>\n\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Screenshot-2026-08-26-at-10.59.44-AM.png?fit=748%2C1024&ssl=1\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11755\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Screenshot-2026-08-26-at-10.59.44-AM.png?resize=898%2C1230&ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"898\" height=\"1230\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Screenshot-2026-08-26-at-10.59.44-AM.png?w=898&ssl=1 898w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Screenshot-2026-08-26-at-10.59.44-AM.png?resize=219%2C300&ssl=1 219w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Screenshot-2026-08-26-at-10.59.44-AM.png?resize=748%2C1024&ssl=1 748w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Screenshot-2026-08-26-at-10.59.44-AM.png?resize=768%2C1052&ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Screenshot-2026-08-26-at-10.59.44-AM.png?resize=600%2C822&ssl=1 600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 898px) 100vw, 898px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-11755\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Belkis Ay\u00f3n. Siempre vuelvo [I Always Return], 1994<\/p><\/div>What this image evokes in me is restlessness, reverence, and myth.<\/p>\n<p>The background is black, so black that the torso of a white figure seems to rise from a void. The white silhouette is wrapped in luminous, shadowy grey flames. The figure’s face is pierced by several sticks. Its gaze is hollow, distant. Where we might expect the mouth, a large mark covers it, as if silencing it. Censoring it. The rest of the torso is woven into an ecology of snakes, fish, and plants. The hands are crossed over the body.<\/p>\n<p>Beneath this figure, three bodies emerge from the darkness. They are marked by the same elements: plants and fish. One conceals a dagger. All three seem to reach upward, as if longing to touch, or be acknowledged by, the great, enlightened figure rising above them.<\/p>\n<p>This is my attempt to describe <em>Siempre Vuelvo<\/em>, a celebrated 1994 collagraph by the Afro-Cuban artist Belkis Ay\u00f3n. Printed through the collagraph technique, the work is rendered in a monochrome palette of black, white, and grey while exploring the secret universe of the Abaku\u00e1 brotherhood.<\/p>\n<p>Coming back to Belkis Ay\u00f3n’s work in 2026 feels different. I’m now the age she was when she left. In 1999, at only thirty-two, she took her own life. She left no farewell. Only a profound silence. It echoed through a Cuba already grappling with the economic and ideological collapse of the Special Period. It still reverberates today, because of the timelessness of her work.<\/p>\n<p>I was born in 1994, in Cienfuegos, Cuba, the same year <em>Siempre Vuelvo<\/em> was made. A coincidence that makes me both curious and strangely connected to the work.<\/p>\n<p>I left Cuba before I was old enough to remember it. Yet I keep returning, again and again. Both inside and outside at once. Today I write from the diaspora, from a distance that is both comfortable and painful. I watch the island from afar. I watch what hope looks like now, worn thin by decades of hardship. I watch what speaking up still costs there.<\/p>\n<p>I often wonder why Belkis chose black, white, and grey. To me, that palette has come to mirror something I recognize too well: the rigid binary that still frames every political vision of Cuba’s future. Should the island once again fall under the influence of the United States, as it did before the Revolution, risking a new kind of neocolonial dependence? Or should it remain on its current path as an authoritarian socialist state, one that has censored, exiled, and disdained so many of its own thinkers and artists? Between these two poles, countless other possibilities disappear. Even her grey isn’t really a third option: it’s what happens when black and white collide, the residue of two forces pressing against each other. Cuba is trapped in this grey too, caught between two forces it did not fully choose and cannot fully leave. I find myself yearning for a way out, toward something more than black, white, or grey.<\/p>\n<p>The Abaku\u00e1 society was founded in 1836 in Regla, Havana. It was formed by enslaved men of Carabal\u00ed origin who had been brought from the region of Old Calabar in West Africa. There, their ancestors belonged to a secret brotherhood known as Ngbe, “the leopard.” In Cuba, that brotherhood became Abaku\u00e1, an exclusively male society.<\/p>\n<p>At its center is a myth.<\/p>\n<p>A woman, Princess Sik\u00e1n, goes to fetch water from a sacred river. There, a magical fish speaks to her, revealing the secret voice of God. Startled, she drops her jar. The fish dies.<\/p>\n<p>She swears to keep the secret. But she breaks that oath and shares it with her husband, who belongs to a rival clan. War follows. To restore peace, the tribes sacrifice her. Only then does the sacred voice return, carried through a drum made from her skin.<\/p>\n<p>Sik\u00e1n is the woman punished for hearing something sacred, and for speaking it. She is remembered and erased at the same time: central to the myth yet excluded from the brotherhood it created.<\/p>\n<p>Belkis Ay\u00f3n once said: “She is like me, and she lives through me in my restlessness, as I instinctively search for an escape.”<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps this is why her work keeps returning to me. Sik\u00e1n’s covered mouth. The myth of a woman punished for speaking. It is not only history. It is not only myth. It survives in the way Cubans on the island can still be punished for speaking freely, in the quiet calculus of what can be said, and what cannot.<\/p>\n<p>Belkis Ay\u00f3n Manso was a visionary: an Afro-Cuban artist, printmaker, curator, and educator. Born in Havana in 1967, she committed herself to the visual arts from an early age. She studied at San Alejandro before continuing at the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA). By the late 1980s, she had already gained international recognition, earning awards for her extraordinary mastery of printmaking.<\/p>\n<p>The mystery of her expressive silence remains a paradox. Her silhouettes, often genderless and rendered in black and white, evoke anonymity and universality. Their fragmented faces suggest fractured identities. Their absent mouths become symbols of repression. Yet their wide, unwavering eyes suggest something else entirely: an unsettling awareness.<\/p>\n<p>Some days, following the news out of Cuba, I feel like that figure myself. Mouth covered, unable to add a clear word to the noise. The information that reaches me is so tangled: propaganda from one side, exile anger from the other, algorithms flattening all of it into fragments, until I stop trying to understand. It leaves me with a wide gaze and speechless, because everything begins to feel hopeless. I recognize that stillness in her figures now. Not peace. Just the exhaustion of trying to discern what’s true from a distance that distorts everything it touches.<\/p>\n<p>In Ay\u00f3n’s work, the traditional relationship between artwork and viewer is reversed. We are no longer simply looking. We are the ones being looked at.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps that is where silence finally breaks.<\/p>\n<p>Not when we speak the loudest, but when we can no longer pretend we have not seen. Ay\u00f3n’s figures do not ask us to admire them. They ask us to answer for what their gaze has revealed. They ask whether we will continue watching in silence, or whether, like Sik\u00e1n, we will risk speaking anyway.<\/p>\n\n\t\t<div class='author-shortcodes'>\n\t\t\t<div class='author-inner'>\n\t\t\t\t<div class='author-image'>\n\t\t\t<img src='' alt='' \/>\n\t\t\t<div class='author-overlay'><\/div>\n\t\t<\/div> \n\t\t<div class='author-info'>\n\t\t\tMonica Maria Garabito (b. 1994, Cienfuegos) is a transdisciplinary researcher and artist based between Rio de Janeiro and Berlin. Born in Cuba and raised in Germany, she studied Cultural Anthropology in Mexico and Germany and completed a Master’s degree in Documentary Filmmaking in 2025 at the International School of Film and Television (EICTV) in Cuba. Her work proposes new ways of listening and being present, in dialogue with African diasporic communities, collective memories, ancestral technologies, and radical joy.\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I left Cuba before I was old enough to remember it. Yet I keep returning, again and again. Both inside and outside at once. Today I write from the diaspora, from a distance that is both comfortable and painful. I watch the island from afar. I watch what hope looks like now, worn thin by decades of hardship. I watch what speaking up still costs there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15102494,"featured_media":11755,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\r\n\r\n{excerpt}\r\n\r\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12684569,728594618,728594591],"tags":[728594619],"class_list":["post-11754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-icles","category-monica-maria-garabito","category-pree-15","tag-pree-15","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Siempre Vuelvo... 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In Assemblies of God Church, Azugwu, the benediction was an uncompromising geography; you were either on your knees or you were a rebel against the Almighty. I would have freed my eleven-year-old aching joints if I could, but I wasn’t ready for the wrath of a congregation that believed pain was the only currency God truly recognized.<\/p>\n<p>\u200bIt was the “ember” period of 2010 \u2014 the third day of a seven-day fast that had turned the air into a thick, salty soup of human breath and desperation. We moved through the holy choreography: hands pressed to foreheads as if to keep our thoughts from escaping; bodies turning toward the cardinal points of distant villages to dismantle “wicked altars” built by enemies we had never met. I clapped my hands with a fierce, rhythmic violence, defeating a Satan I only knew through the pages of a book.<\/p>\n<p>\u200b”Lord, all I\u2019m asking for is that You give me a child. Give me a child! Nye m nwa!”<\/p>\n<p>\u200bThe words didn’t fall; they tore. I was forced to look. She was kneeling over her chair, praying her soul out of her body. Sweat pooled in the dips of her brow and dripped onto the plastic like bits of heavy rain \u2014 a private monsoon in a public space. My childhood prayers were thin, polite things: \u201cGod bless my parents,\u201d \u201cMake me a blessing.\u201d But this woman was naked in her wanting. At eleven, I was a creature of Sunday school lessons and girls\u2019 classes, a girl who had never known the touch of a man, let alone the rhythmic, private rituals required to summon a life. Suddenly, her prayer wasn’t just a spiritual cry; it was a confession. It carried the scent of the bedroom, the heavy, unvoiced secrets of the flesh that I was not yet supposed to understand.<\/p>\n<p>A hot wave of shame washed over me. I felt like a thief who had accidentally stumbled into someone\u2019s most sacred, uncurtained room, witnessing a transaction of the body I wasn’t prepared to name. I recoiled from the raw, unpolished weight of her truth, embarrassed by a revelation that made my own innocence feel like a garment too small for the world I was now seeing.<\/p>\n<p>\u200bAfter the service, I trailed her through the magnitude of the crowd, watching her cascade down a hill like a secret being carried away. I wished God would catch her heart before it shattered. I was too young to understand the cruelty of the trade. I had no way of knowing that the life she was about to summon would be the very shadow that would eclipse her own.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">***<\/p>\n<p>\u200bA couple moved into our street on a beautiful amber evening, their properties clinched together on a small truck as if they knew the slightest slip would send their whole fortune down the gutter. I watched the woman unload. My heart did a slow somersault of recognition. She was the praying woman, and she was carrying a miracle beneath her heart. She was pregnant.<\/p>\n<p>\u200bI smiled at the beautiful coincidence of it. I wouldn’t understand until fifteen years later why the people my heart reaches out to always seem to drift into my orbit, but that evening, I simply smiled at the logic of God.<\/p>\n<p>\u200bI often saw her in the early evenings, sitting outside with her legs stretched before her, slowly fanning a space that felt too small for her. She wasn’t just another neighbor; she was a radiance. There was a deliberate, scholarly grace in the way she communicated \u2014 a woman who spoke in measured, thoughtful sentences that made you feel, for a moment, like she was the only person in the world worth listening to. You could tell she was properly schooled by the effortless, melodic lilt of her English and the way she flipped through her stacked books, treating the worn spines like old, sacred friends.<\/p>\n<p>She was the kind of woman who gave from an empty cup. I remember her sharing the last of her garden eggs with me and my friend, Chinenye, her faint, apologetic smile suggesting she was sorry she didn’t have a whole feast to offer. I felt a sudden, sharp guilt taking from her emptiness; I wanted to push the gift back into her hands.<\/p>\n<p>They lived in one of the single rooms in the compound \u2014 one of those cramped, rectangular boxes where life is forced to happen all at once. There were no hallways for secrets, no spare corners for a quiet recovery. Every indelicacy of existence \u2014 the cooking, the sleeping, the washing, and the demanding growth inside a woman \u2014 is compressed into the same few square feet of linoleum. I would study the cracked walls of their room, where the doors were plastered into the center of the square walls like an accidental revelation \u2014 as if the building had never intended to house a human soul, but had been forced to admit one.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_11750\" style=\"width: 687px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-11750\" data-attachment-id=\"11750\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/26\/the-price-of-a-full-gele\/screenshot-21\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/LaVaughn-Belle-Chaney-series-2.jpeg?fit=677%2C700&ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"677,700\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"Screenshot","created_timestamp":"1787741251","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"Screenshot","orientation":"1","alt":""}\" data-image-title=\"Screenshot\" data-image-description=\"<p>LaVaughn Belle. &#8220;Beyond Blue&#8221;. Chaney series<\/p>\n\" data-image-caption=\"<p>Screenshot<\/p>\n\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/LaVaughn-Belle-Chaney-series-2.jpeg?fit=677%2C700&ssl=1\" class=\"wp-image-11750 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/LaVaughn-Belle-Chaney-series-2.jpeg?resize=677%2C700&ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"677\" height=\"700\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/LaVaughn-Belle-Chaney-series-2.jpeg?w=677&ssl=1 677w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/LaVaughn-Belle-Chaney-series-2.jpeg?resize=290%2C300&ssl=1 290w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/preelit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/LaVaughn-Belle-Chaney-series-2.jpeg?resize=600%2C620&ssl=1 600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 677px) 100vw, 677px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-11750\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">LaVaughn Belle. Beyond Blue. Chaney series.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>She had meticulously shoved clothes and scraps of paper into every gap beneath the door, a painful, silent labour intended to keep the sound of her life from seeping into the ears of the neighbors. She lived in a muffled world. I always wondered how a woman of such refinement had ended up married to a man who was her total opposite \u2014 someone whose “uncooked” words were rough and jarring, a man who used his might to ensure every consonant ending was “louudddd and cleaarrrr,” as if volume could replace understanding. She would hum tunes I don’t recognize, her voice a fragile thread holding together the heavy demands of her swelling body.<\/p>\n<p>\u200bThe morning of her labour held its foggy silence at 5:00 AM. My father was already dressed in his “dragon” shirt \u2014 the fire-breathing fabric he claimed brought him bad luck every time he wore it. Usually, he would wake us by painfully poking our ribs with a purposeful middle finger, a ritual of discipline that asked, \u201cCan’t you tell it\u2019s time for prayers?\u201d But that morning, the poke never came.<\/p>\n<p>I heard his taxi engine cough and fade, a mechanical rattle that usually signaled the start of a long day. But then, it stopped. He pulled up at our neighbor\u2019s door, a hurried dash that broke the stillness of the dawn.<\/p>\n<p>People often reached for my father in the bruised hours of the night \u2014 calling out to the man with the car when the world felt too heavy to carry alone. He was the vessel for every neighborhood crisis: a child burning with a sudden, mysterious fever; a neighbor slumped in the shadow of a stroke; or Papa Elmond, who had quietly slipped from sleep into the forever-outside while his family breathed the safe, recycled air of the indoors. But that morning, my heart didn’t lean toward tragedy. I let myself believe in the sweetness of a new arrival. I imagined the dash was for a beginning. To me, it meant a gathering of food and the crinkle of biscuit wrappers; it meant the air would soon be thick with talcum powder and sugary with the scent of a naming ceremony. I lay there in the dark, smiling.<\/p>\n<p>I listened to the muffled urgency behind that thin door. I didn\u2019t yet understand the geography of poverty: how in a single room, the distance between the birthing mat and the coffin is no wider than a heartbeat; how the cost of a surgery can turn a place of life into a place so cold; and how a mother can bleed to death, accompanied only by the desperate rhythm of clapping hands, prayers, and wishes.<\/p>\n<p>\u200bThe news of her demise didn’t just spread; it stained the street. I was eleven, but I felt the walls of my own civilization crumble. My friend told me the woman had promised her new school shoes. I didn’t care about the shoes. I wanted her to be here. I wanted to know where miracles go when the body becomes a battleground between complications and prayer. How she had prayed! There is a specific, jagged kind of mourning for the woman who dies at the finish line, her hands gracefully reaching for the prize, only for those hands to turn too weak, too fragile, to grab it.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">***<\/p>\n<p>\u200bI would find my first lover on the day the Royal Rangers led her funeral procession past my school gate. The band played, and her picture \u2014 boldly printed on a large poster \u2014 decorated the cars and the bodies of the mourners. I sat on the assembly ground, my eyes blurring the world into a smudge of grief. My classmates asked, “What’s the problem, Faith?” but I couldn’t explain the precarity of a life lost in the pursuit of a miracle.<\/p>\n<p>\u200bTwelve years later, history repeats itself with a cruel, rhythmic accuracy.<\/p>\n<p>\u200bJune 2022. Mummy Ukwuoma “bled too much.” As if a life could be summarized in those three words. As if her laughter and her dreams could be poured out into a single, dry sentence. She was a neighbor who wasn’t easy to love \u2014 we had our differences \u2014 but I watched her fetch water from the dormant stream even when her belly was a heavy, protruding weight. The stream at the end of our street was a stagnant, green-filmed eye that watched us all, but for Mummy Ukwuoma, it was a daily battlefield. Even as her belly swelled into a hard, uncomfortable mountain, she refused to yield to the exhaustion that claimed her eyes. I remember the rhythmic slap-slap of her plastic yellow slippers hitting the dry earth. She would carry that extra burden of a jerrycan more than nine times a day \u2014 a woman trying to wash away the “bad luck” of three daughters with the hope of a son.<\/p>\n<p>When the boy finally came, we jubilated, though not with the usual fanfare. She had come home weak, and we watched, hushed, as the “victory” began to rot. Penury is a quiet, hungry thing. It started with joints too fragile to hold a child; on several occasions, her son would slip from her arms while breastfeeding, leaving her to cry and lament. Her feet could no longer carry her. The last time I saw her standing was the day she dragged herself to our flat to complain to my mother about the insistent weakness. I saw her from the window and filled with fright \u2014 she looked like death, a specter who had just birthed life, supporting one shoulder against the other.<\/p>\n<p>After that, she never came out again. Then came the bedsores \u2014 angry, blossoming \u00a0craters on her skin that smelled of damp rooms and neglected prayers. I sat at my laptop, my fingers flying over the keys as I messaged foundations on Facebook, my words a desperate, digital libation. I described the way her laughter, once a boisterous shield, had thinned into a whistle. I pleaded for blood, for gauze, for a miracle that didn\u2019t require a funeral poster. But the internet is a vast, cold ocean, and my pleas were just bubbles on the surface.<\/p>\n<p>The day she died, the street lost its sense of smell. The air was thick with the powerful, undeniable stench of properly rotten human flesh that lingered for hours, a grim testament to her slow departure. She died in the indelicacy of pain, her skin sticking to the very linoleum that had witnessed her silent labour.<\/p>\n<p>\u200bWhat is this frantic struggle to bear children? To silence the whispers of the street? To wear a full gele at Christmas with a baby strapped to your back \u2014 a crown that costs a life? What does it cost to feel like “enough” in a world that only counts you when you are carrying, when you are labouring, when you are breaking?<\/p>\n<p>\u200bI never knew their real names. They were always Nwunye Darlington and Mummy Ukwuoma. Identities swallowed by the roles they died to fulfill.<\/p>\n<p>Now, the hospital tiles are cold against my heels, a sterile geography that feels miles away from the Azugwu church floor, yet the air is just as thick with the scent of impending transaction. As the strikes of a contraction ripple through me \u2014 a white-hot blade of lightning \u2014 I don’t see the monitors or the nurse\u2019s masked face. I see the ‘dragon’ shirt my father wore in 2010. I see the muffled gap beneath Nwunye Darlington’s door. I see Mummy Ukwuoma’s bones beneath rotten flesh.<\/p>\n<p>I grease the memories of these two women with my own sweat. Every time the monitor pings, I wonder if it is a heartbeat or a countdown. I am walking a bridge made of glass, and beneath me lies the history of women who traded their breath for a cry. I look at my own hands, gripped white against the bedrails, and I ponder the fragility of this crossing. What if I never see the light of day again? What if my name, too, is traded for the sweetness of a child\u2019s first breath?<\/p>\n<p>I rest my head against the pillow, drawing a deep, jagged breath. I embrace every incoming strike with a groan, and at the command of the nurses, I push. I push \u2014 not just against the physical pain, but against the history that waits to swallow me whole.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"v_Gxj86N9RWqUda06QMd lyqUZbWyTtR4uwQO_R7F\">\n<div class=\"NMXjpR18A6BRc6EEUDI5\">\n\t\t<div class='author-shortcodes'>\n\t\t\t<div class='author-inner'>\n\t\t\t\t<div class='author-info'>\n\t\t\tEgwuchukwu Ebubechi Faith is a writer, educator, independent researcher, and literacy advocate based in Nigeria. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Literary Studies from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and is the Founder and Executive Director of Bookbridge Literacy Foundation, a nonprofit working to bridge learning gaps through literacy initiatives, storytelling, and community-based educational programmes. Her creative works have been featured on notable literary platforms, including her short fiction, \u201cThe True Weight of a Crown,\u201d published by Writer\u2019s Space Africa, and her poem, \u201cEvidence,\u201d published by Word Rhymes & Rhythm (WRR), among others.\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I listened to the muffled urgency behind that thin door. I didn\u2019t yet understand the geography of poverty: how in a single room, the distance between the birthing mat and the coffin is no wider than a heartbeat;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15102494,"featured_media":11750,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\r\n\r\n{excerpt}\r\n\r\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[728594617,3748,728594591,728594599],"tags":[728594619],"class_list":["post-11746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faith-egwuchukwu","category-non-fiction","category-pree-15","category-shortlisted","tag-pree-15","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Price of a Full Gele - PREE<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/preelit.com\/2026\/08\/26\/the-price-of-a-full-gele\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Price of a Full Gele - PREE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I listened to the muffled urgency behind that thin door. 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