by Obiotika Wilfred Toochukwu
They said she burned too brightly–that her love was a small fire trying to cook the world. She danced while others watched, her body a metronome of hunger. He loved her for her defiance, for the way she lit her own ruin.
In that village, music rose before dawn. Trumpets quarreled with drums, and girls in bright wrappers shook their hips as if shaking off shame. Someone called her name in the crowd, and she smiled the way a wound gleams under fresh blood.
They said she lived by exchange. One man gave her a kidney; another gave her his years. She accepted each offering like an altar accepts smoke–without thanks, without regret. Her lips spoke affection, but her eyes were the eyes of a lender waiting for interest.
The songs called her monstrous, yet everyone danced to her tune. She was a mirror and a plague. Like two men cleaning a pit, she and her lovers took turns handling filth. Passion became labor, labor became survival.
When famine came, it arrived like a suitor–patient, promising. The vineyards withered, and the girls who once mocked her grew silent. Still, she moved through the fields, her skirts full of dust and rumor.
In the end, she stood alone on the hill of burnt bread, listening to the echoes of her own song. There was no audience now, only the memory of music and the faint smell of smoke. Someone said she was last seen near the river, her reflection split by wind. Others said she turned into ash mid-dance.
But the truth is simpler: she became the silence after celebration, the breath between two heartbeats–the rhythm that remains when love burns itself out.
© 2026 Obiotika Wilfred Toochukwu All rights reserved.
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