Akwaeke Emezi

I felt heavy my whole life.
I always thought that death would be the heaviest thing of all, but it
wasn’t, it really wasn’t. Life was like being dragged through concrete in
circles, wet and setting concrete that dried with each rotation of my
unwilling body. As a child, I was light. It didn’t matter too much; I slid
through it, and maybe it even felt like a game, like I was just playing in
mud, like nothing about that slipperiness would ever change, not really. But
then I got bigger and it started drying on me and eventually I turned into an
uneven block, chipping and sparking on the hard ground, tearing off into
painful chunks.
I wanted to stay empty, like the eagle in the proverb, left to perch, my
bones filled with air pockets, but heaviness found me and I couldn’t do
anything about it. I couldn’t shake it off; I couldn’t transform it, evaporate
or melt it. It was distinct from me, but it hooked itself into my body like a
parasite. I couldn’t figure out if something was wrong with me or if this was
just my life—if this was just how people felt, like concrete was dragging
their flesh off their bones.
The fugues were short absences that I became grateful for, small
mercies. Like finally getting to rest after having your eyelids forced open
for days. I hid them from my parents and grew out my hair, thinking that
the weight dropping from my head would lighten the one inside of me. It
worked—not by making anything lighter, no, but by making me feel more
balanced, like one weight was pulling the other and the strain on me had
been lessened. Perhaps I had just become the fulcrum, the point on which
everything hinged, the turning. I don’t know. I just know that I hurt a little
less with each inch of hair I refused to cut.
Looking back, I really don’t know what I thought it was going to protect
me from.