Did I clarify that it was New Year’s Day? That the kiss was my mother’s last gift? She was dying of cancer. Breast, though no one but me and a doctor from a different island knew. I wasn’t allowed to tell a soul because cancer of the breast or the uterus or any of the part of the body we call private, intimate, sexual—the parts we use for love—cancer there was a shameful thing. And so I boarded that plane and climbed onto that bus, heading to my own death, knowing I’d likely never see my mother again.

You still can’t believe that you have your passport to heaven and it has been stamped. A glance at the desperate faces waiting in a long line at the embassy makes you smile. Their fate is still in the hands of Americans. You pity these people. You are a hundred times better than them, especially the ones with oversize scarecrow suits hanging on their emaciated shoulders. Then there are the hopefuls with bend-bend black shoes covered in fine dust the colour of Ibadan rusted roofs. The ones who have been in the queue since 4am, eating only bread and akara washed down with bottles of warm coke or tap water wrapped in nylon bags. You shake your head. They all remind you of a column of ants marching towards a single grain of sugar.