It started innocently enough.  It’s Friday (the 13^th in fact which is ironic beyond all measures) and I am parked in my home office to begin the day.  I prepare to read through the list of personal emails that have filled my account since the previous morning.  I’m into my typical morning routine which involves email accompanied by some type of breakfast.  Today I have rewarded myself with an egg sandwich.  Having lost the naive view in younger days that Crunch Berries is a good way to start the day, the choice of healthy cereals just didn’t seem like a proper reward for a busy week.   I sit back in the chair with a glass of orange juice in hand and watch the mailbox slowly fill with the bold headlines of emails not yet read.  I focus on the bright blue bar at the bottom of my monitor that…

**Just when I thought my family was relatively settled and life was flowing into a new normal…I unexpectedly found myself in a free fall. It has been a week, to the day, since I wrote this. I didn’t have a web connection until today. I am hopeful that my posts and my life, will from this point forward, be more consistent. Hope, is the operative word, here.

Race. The colour of my skin, the flare of my nostrils, the texture of my hair, the S of my backside. I am none of these; I am all of these. Race. My mother is caramel, my father pure chocolate, and I am hazelnut. They taught me that education and excellence would open any door. I believed it; still believe it. Race. Raised in Nigeria, I live in The Netherlands. I temper the directness of the Dutch with the verbosity I think Nigerians inherited from the British. Race. When I look in the mirror, I see a girl, a woman, a lover, a wife, a mother, a friend, a sister, a mentor, a coach, a writer, a warrior — all I have been, all I now am, all I will one day be. When I look in the mirror, I see me. What if my father were Australian and my…

If I could I would gather all the words from the wild, pick them like berries     and press them into these pages to     bleed them, beautiful, into my notebook I would chase syllable streams that refresh dry banks and stop. at the quarry where I will cut confused hands on stone,     going through the   ruins of my       dreams and I will bottle my cries to     pour over the altar of my art If I could I would answer the laughter in the wind, unravel the rhetoric of the rain,     and walking dirt and gravel transcribe     the vernacular of city streets I would record every note of joy from children and undo the silence of grandmothers,     ask them   about dogged hope I would keep on west of my despair, right through the dying sun and spell     the sunrise as he lights…