Bokelskere.no

'Chiamanka, stop looking for a partner in your madness. And what does it actually mean to be known? You want somebody to study you and cram you like a textbook?'
'Yes, and anticipate me.'
'Anticipate you.'
'If you live your life and die without one person fully knowing you, then have you even lived?'
'Well, I know you fully.'
'It has to be romantic.'
'Why?'
'It just has to be.'
'Your thesis is falling apart. So you're not looking to be known, on principle; you're looking for a hetereosexual man who will study you like a textbook'.
'It doesn't sound as nice when you say it like that.'
We were both laughing and I thought of how much I had missed my cousin, how I longed to hug her again.

Zikora felt a bifurcation of self, two parts of her existing in parallel. At work she was meticulous, sceptical, reading everything twice and asking questions, but with men she blundered ahead, wanting to believe whatever she was told.

I have never lied in my life as often as I lied to Darnell. I lied to please him, to be the person he wanted me to be, and sometimes I lied to wrest wretched scraps of reassurance from him. I'm sick, I would write, to force a reply, after days of sending him unaswered texts. Sometimes he replied right away, and other times he waited a day or two. Fell better, was all he would write; not a question that opened the door for more, not How are you feeling now? or What's going on? My days passed in emptiness until I saw him again. My phone lay always beside me on my desk, never on silent, for fear I might miss his call. When it beeped a text message, I snatched it up and felt annoyed with whoever had texted, as if by texting they had taken up the space meant for him. His silences astonished me; how could my force of feeling not cause in him a smilar obsession?