What I will not write here
Something was done to me. I am not going to describe it in this notebook. I am going to describe the ceiling.
I have decided what this notebook is for and what it is not for. It is not for what happened. What happened will go, one day, in a book, in order, with the names changed and the dates right, once, so that it is on the record and so that I never have to say it twice. This notebook is for the days around it. So.
The ceiling of the room by the stadium has a water stain shaped like Imo State. I have looked at it for nine days. There is a crack running from the light fitting toward the door that I had never noticed, and now I could draw it.
The woman under the umbrella sent a Fanta with a boy on Tuesday. She did not come herself, and I understand why, and the Fanta is still on the floor, unopened, because I cannot yet be a person who drinks a Fanta.
Mama does not know. Eudora does not know. E. in Lagos does not know. I have a body that has been made into evidence and a city that would use the evidence against me, and a notebook, and a ceiling. That is the inventory. I am writing it because writing is the only thing I have done in nine days that I chose.