Men Who Are Highly Flammable. Women Who Set Themselves on Fire

A very short story grounded in self, choices and unrequited love — from Ghanaian Victoria Naa Takia Nunoo

What do people think about when they are peeing in the toilet? Do they brood about serious issues like the bad economy? Do they attempt to calculate the distance between their genitals and the toilet bowl? Do they concentrate on the splutter sound their urine makes when it hits the water? What goes on in their minds the few seconds they sit, or stand frozen, staring down, or around, pretending to not see the bubbles forming on the yellow liquid mixing with the clear water?

I think about the men who cannot make up their minds. Selfish motherfucking men who drag women along with them, over their dusty potholed road of love, promising nothing yet everything at the same time.

Somehow, these are the men I am attracted to. Men who bury my compliments in the sides of their cheeks. Men who have built canopies over their heads and walls taller than Babylon’s or Jericho’s around themselves. These are the men I wobble after. With a broken leg, or two. And a sellotaped heart. They are the ruins I want to live in. The sand storm I want to hold in my palm. The winds I want to capture in a transparent bottle — turn it this way and that — to see what it is made of, what makes it sound and move like ghosts, what makes it hard to control, what language it speaks, and what voice it listens to.

These men, who leave a woman’s body and soul shook with many conflicting emotions. These men women know are towers of destruction and yet enter, not covering their heads, or protecting their eyes, or wearing safety boots. These men, whose stomachs are lined with a thousand fire crackers. And these women who take their hungry match-lit lips to theirs.

Victoria Naa Takia Nunoo is a Ghanaian writer and poet. Her works of poetry and (or) fiction have appeared in The Kalahari Review, Brittle Paper, Afridiaspora, Afreada, Praxis Mag Online, and in the anthology, ‘The Different Shades of a Feminine Mind’ — an African Women Writers Literary Project. She was a finalist in the 2017 RL Poetry Award and has recently emerged winner of the 2018 RL Poetry Award. You see more her work on: poetryetal and follow her Twitter @naatakia.