Freshwater Akwaeke Emezi Quotes

Understand this if you understand nothing: it is a powerful thing to be seen

Sometimes, you recognize truth because it destroys you for a bit.

The world in my head has been far more real than the one outside—maybe that’s the exact definition of madness, come to think of it.

The first madness was that we were born, that they stuffed a god into a bag of skin.

It was interesting for us to watch, how he didn’t even have to go anywhere in order to leave her.

But I've learned that you can't force forever on the wrong people. They belong exactly where they are, giving exactly what they want to. I don't ask for anything more. I figure I shouldn't have to.

And while he loves humans (he was born of one, lived and died as one), what they forget is that he loves them as a god does, which is to say, with a taste for suffering.

I have lived many lives inside this body. I lived many lives before they put me in this body. I will live many lives when they take me out of it.

When you break something, you must study the pattern of the shattering before you can piece it back together.

We understood what was necessary -humans often fail at listening, as if their stubbornness will convince the truth to change, as if they have that kind of power. They do, however, understand forceful things, cruelties--they obey those.

Think of brief insanities that are in you, not just the ones that blossomed as you grew into taller, more sinful versions of yourself, but the ones were born with, tucked behind your liver.

I was furious. It was if staying alive just gave everyone else time to leave you.

The worst part of embodiment is being unseen.

I can see you change,” he told us, his eyes narrowed in interest. “Your body language. How you talk. Your eyes. You’re not always the same person, are you?

But it is only a fool who does not know that freedom is paid for in old clotted blood, in fresh reapings of it, in renewed scarifications.

And this is how you break a child, you know. Step one, take the mother away.

He loves them as a god does, which is to say, with a taste for suffering.

It was her first time kissing a white person, and briefly, she wondered why he didn’t have any lips.

Let me tell you the truth about men like that--they want soft moons. They want women with just enough crescent to provide a sufficient edge, tender little slivers of light that they can bring home to their mothers.

We're afraid for you, they said. It's like you're on this thin line between being alive and being dead, like one small shift could send you either direction

Open gates are like sores that can’t stop grieving: they infect with space, gaps, widenings. Room

We wish she had saved it, but that is how humans are. Important things slip past in the moment, when it feels sharp and they are young enough to think that the feeling will remain.

It is like we said: when gods awaken in you, sometimes you carve yourself up to satisfy them.

I held my breath, but it didn't feel like I was holding my breath, it felt like there should never have been breath. It felt like the entire concept of breath had been something I imagined. After all, my body was never meant to move like this. These lungs had to have been built for show. They should never have expanded and I should never have been alive.

They just listened to music and talked about their childhoods, and it was all nice and innocent if you forget that they were humans who had hearts.

When you have been living in a great shadow, it hurts to look at the light, to be awake, to feel.

I had surrendered and the reward was that I knew myself

We came from somewhere—everything does. When the transition is made from spirit to flesh, the gates are meant to be closed. It’s a kindness. It would be cruel not to.

The gods do not care. It is not them, after all, that will pay the cost.

Many things are better than a complete remembering; many things we do are a mercy.

...humans often fail at listening, as if their stubbornness will convince the truth to change, as if they have that kind of power.

It's basically the same thing, she said. I didn't have anyone to hold me and now I don't have anyone to kill me. You'd think he's come through on at least one of these points.

I had arrived, flesh from flesh, true blood from true blood. I was the wildness under the skin, the skin into a weapon, the weapon over the flesh.

I was furious. It was as if staying alive just gave everyone else time to leave you.

It is not easy to look at me, I know this very well.

Think of brief insanities that are in you, not just the ones that blossomed as you grew into taller, more sinful versions of yourself, but the ones you were born with, tucked behind your liver.

The Ada could look back on her life and see, like clones, several of her standing there in a line. This terrified her, because if there were so many of her, then which one was she? Were they false and her current self real, or was her current self false and it was one of the others, lost in the line, who was the real Ada?

All the madnesses, each and every blinding one, they can all be traced back to the gates. Those carved monstrosities, those clay and chalk portals, existing everywhere and nowhere and all at once. They open, things are born, they close. The opening is easy, a pushing out, an expansion, an inhalation: the dust of divinity is released into the world. It has to be a temporary channel, though, a thing that is sealed afterward, because the gates stink of knowledge, they cannot be left swinging wide like a slack mouth, leaking mindlessly. That would contaminate the human world--bodies are not meant to remember things from the other side. But these are gods and they move like heated water, so the rules are softened and stretched. The gods do not care. It is not them, after all, that will pay the cost.

After Saachi left, the Ada sank even more into her books, by instinct, separating herself from this world and disappearing into others. She read everywhere: on the toilet, at the dining table, in the library before school assembly each morning. It is not clear how much saving these books were capable of.

They didn't believe in interfering with the child's imagination, and so when the Ada finished one of her many books and decided that she could talk to animals, no one corrected her. 'It did no harm to let her believe that,' Saul said, and the Ada continued to believe wildly, in Yshwa and fairies and pixies living in the flame of the forest blossoms.

They're not bad tears she said, to calm to him. I've never had sex without a mask on before. There's always this other hard layer on top of the real me.

sometimes, love is almost protection enough.

don’t know why I left them alone—maybe I felt

You find yourself selling dreams of spectacular hereafters, possible only if you believe, if you really, really, believe.

To be singled out and locked into the blurred consciousness of a little mind?

It wasn’t me,” I said. “I don’t know what happened.” If you don’t know what happened, how do you know it wasn’t you?

The two of them smelled strange, like hope, like something fucking with the fine edges of my memory, something I was hungry for but couldn’t remember the taste of.

She was good at other things too—crying, for example, which filled her with purpose, replenished all those little crevices of empty.

If you ever need to take a break from this world, call me. I will come to you in a heartbeat and we will steal time.

It was impossible to love him. He had too much hate inside and he thought I would fall for words, as if you can get me with my own weapon.

People were known to return in renovated bodies; it happens all the time.

Exactly.” I patted her hand. “We’re the buffer between you and madness, we’re not the madness.

Don't mind her," I whispered to Ada, looking back at the woman with hatred. "Who is she, sef? Stupid bitch." She's just a fucking human, I almost added, she doesn't even matter, none of this matters.

Love is transformative in that way. Like small gods, it can bring out the prophet in you. You find yourself selling dreams of spectacular hereafters, possible only if you believe, if you really, really believe.

In the middle of Ada's pain, I kept looking for a window I could use to take her home. She didn't even have the strength to fight me, and my plan could've work then, except that one day, Ada got a phone call from a number she didn't recognize. When she picked up, Ewan's voice poured into her ear.

Everyone knows the stories of hungry gods, ignored gods, bitter, scorned, and vengeful gods. First duty, feed your gods. If they live (like we do) inside your body, find a way, get creative, show them the red of your faith, of your flesh; quiet the voices with the lullaby of the altar. It’s not as if you can escape us—where would you run to?

It took a minute for Ada to understand, to realize that she was locked away, that all those parts of her he wanted, the parts she wanted to give, the parts that would complete the love they had- all those parts were gone. Or if they weren't gone , they'd been put somewhere so far away that not even Ada could touch them, let alone Ewan. I watched her face fall and when she started crying, I held her and whispered apologies for what felt like forever.

She started to scream. She screamed and screamed and screamed. Her vision was numb. There was a window in front of her but it opened into a nothingness like the one yawning from her mouth. Somewhere she could hear a building sound, a wind, huge and wide, rushing out of the void, rushing toward her. The walls, the veils in her head, they tore, they ripped, they collapsed. The wind rushed over his empty voice and the Ada thought with a sudden final clarity-- She has come. She has come for me at last.

Look, I was a hungry shade, nothing more. I latched onto the men, and their energy felt like sticky fruit sliding between my fingers. and when we were done, I was still hungry. And after the next time. I was still hungry. And after the one after that one, I was still hungry. I would have drowned them all. I would have inched slowly over their bodies, dipped my fingers inside their throats and ripped out sounds. I filled their bed with secrets. Ada was right- I found pleasure in evil. I did many things in hunger that could be misconstrued.

Allow us a moment to explain a few things. When you break something, you must study the pattern of the shattering before you can piece it back together. So it was with the Ada. She was a question wrapped up in breath: How do you survive when they place a god inside your body? We said before that it was like shoving a sun into a bag of skin, so it should be no surprise that her skin would split or her mind would break. Consider her burned open. It was an unusual incarnation, to be a child of Ala as well as an ọgbanje, to be mothered by the god who owns life yet pulled toward death. We did the best we could.

Inn trying to protect myself now

I asked, even though I already knew the answer. He was only a human—what else could I expect, realistically? He wanted to pretend he was somehow better than he knew he was; he wasn’t ready to throw himself into sin. Humans find it easier to just lie and lie to themselves.

Au fond c'est la même chose, a-t-elle repris. Je n'avais personne pour me prendre dans ses bras et, aujourd'hui, je n'ai personne pour me tuer. On aurait pu croire qu'il ferait le nécessaire au moins une fois sur les deux.

He had too much hate inside and he thought I would fall for words, as if you can get me with my own weapon. Try a god, I should have told him, they like when you run to them.

Humans often pray and forget what their mouths can do, forget that

The pain is so old, Yshwa. I don't even have the strength to want anything anymore. I just float and stare at the sky, and when the pain hits, I arch my neck to keep the water from overcoming my face.

Understand this if you understand nothing: it is a powerful thing to be seen.

I didn't want to be alone, so I chose them. In many ways, you see, I am not even real.

I found him and he makes me happy. Thats enough for me. Who needs a forever?

Humanity was ugly and cratered; it made sleep a relief, a brief escape where we could slide into another realm.

Im so tired of being empty. I returned it inside out and wore it like a glove, smeared it on the walls until my house shouted empty, empty, empty. I didn't know what to do with it afterward. All I know is that it hurts to be in spaces between freedom.

Understand this if you understand nothing: it is a powerful thing to be seen. We found ourself venturing timidly from the Ada's mouth, telling him about us, how we were a misplaced god, how we were not human, how we had divided the Ada's mind. Leshi looked at the Ada in soft awe - even a priest can be ministered to.

Here is another truth: she is not ours, we are hers.

had arrived, flesh from flesh, true blood from true blood. I was the wildness under the skin, the skin into a weapon, the weapon over the flesh.

He ran his hands along the curve of her faith and felt its strength, that it would remain steadfast whether he came to her or not. And even if it did not hold, Yshwa had no intentions of manifesting. He had endured that abomination of the physical once and it was enough, never again.

Ewan wanted what any man in love would: a wife who could withstand tenderness, who didn't have the core of her locked away inside a dark ocean. He wanted a soft moon in his hands and he got a scalding sun.

We forgave him easily. After you have let the wilderness in you come out and play, after you have spilled your darkness in front of a stranger, it can be difficult to look at them in the sentience of daylight. Besides, he was only a beautiful blip in the crazed timeline of embodiment—he mattered so much, and yet, not at all.

She was moody, bright, a heaving sun. Violent. She screamed a lot. She was chubby and beautiful and insane if anyone had known enough to see it.

You named us the shadow that eats things and the smoke that hides the mother color from our teeth, and you have granted us dominion over this marble room that you call your mind, so here is the place where you miss that man and the girls and the road you used to run down, it is soft and fleshy, a bulb of feeling, and here we are like a useful edge and here is the cut, here is the fall, here is the empty that follows it all.

I stop being afraid of relocations and I can move wherever I want because I know that I will be loved constantly across all space. And even if it fades with them, it will bloom again. We are all conduits. It moves through us freely.

All freshwater comes out of the mouth of a python

All freshwater comes out of the mouth of a python.

I'm trying to protect myself now

[The ọgbanje are] creatures of God with powers over mortals. … They are not subject to the laws of justice and have no moral scruples, causing harm without justification. —C. Chukwuemeka Mbaegbu, The Ultimate Being in Igbo Ontology

...the worship that is drowned in water. All water is connected. All freshwater comes out of the mouth of the python

I am here and not here, real and not real... I am my others; we are one and we are many.

We have a saying back home: Ịchụrụ chi ya aka mgba. One does not challenge their chi to a wrestling match. It feels as if that’s what I’ve been doing for years now, wrestling as if it could end in anything other than my loss. But it’s a relief to finally be thrown, to lie with my back on the sand, alive and out of breath. You can see the sky properly this way.

Quan penso en ells i en l'amor que els professo, aquest amor es desplega en un de més gran. El pit se'm multiplica. Fins i tot tinc ganes d'agafar la cara dels meus amics i dir-los que els estimo. No em sento atrapada ni ancorada, i això és molt estrany, Yshwa. Els trasllats ja no em fan por i puc anar on vulgui perquè sé que sempre m'estimaran, en tot l'espai. I encara que aquest amor s'esvaeixi amb ells, tornarà a florir. Tots som conductes. Es mou lliurement a través nostre.

But she was - she has always been - a terrifyingly beautiful thing. If you ever saw her at her fullest, you would understand - power becomes the child. She is heavy and unbearably light, still her mother’s hatchling. Think of her when the moon is rich, flatulent, bursting with pus and light, repugnant with strength. Yes, now you are beginning to understand.

Understand this if you understand nothing; it is a powerful thing to be seen.

...it was as if he had hooked his fingers into our eyes and flayed us neatly, peeling us raw.

He was a stranger, but she was not afraid because we knew him, something in his marrow matched ours.

Anything, you see, that would make that pale secret flesh sing that bright mother color.

When you name something, it comes into existence—did you know that? There is strength there, bone-white power injected in a rush, like a trembling drug.

He was a force of a human, true, with storm eyes and hands like a future, but he was still just a human.

The machete twisted as they said that, opening a cave inside me. I felt like I was starving, being eaten up by myself.

After all, was I not the hunger in Ada? I was made out of desire, I tasted of it, I filled her up with it and choked her, lying over her like a killing cloud, soft and unstoppable, all the weight of a wet sky.

They want women with just enough crescent to provide a sufficient edge, tender little slivers of light that they can bring home to their mothers.

It felt as if they could seize the sky and force it to its knees. I wanted to lock myself in with them and run out of air, to be loved like the weapon I was, to lie in bruises like a monster.

After our first birth, it took only a short time before we realized that time had trapped us in a space where we no longer were what we used to be, but had not yet become what we were going to be. It was a place that always and never moved. The space between the spirits and the alive is death. The space between life and death is resurrection.