Flash Fiction by Ebele Mọgọ
We were water people. This world was not enough for us. Mammy Wota and Papi Wota. Nsogbu di kwa.
Groaning, groaning alone. Trickling through spaces. Not quite noticed, only in ways that did not matter.
Then we found each other. You know what I mean by found – the type of found you only ever were when we met. The type of found I only ever was when we met.
And you made me lose taste for this world. I would have none of its shallow thrills. No other well could even compare. This was the fount of life.
Then we wanted to consume each other. At least I wanted to consume you. I wanted your water to swim with mine. I wanted to draw it all from all its depths, all the caverns deep down in the crust of your earth.
I wanted more and more and more of you.
How can I say this truly? I wanted you to drink me up.
I wanted you to look at me, and see past all the superficiality. I wanted to prove to you that me and you were from the same mother ocean. I knew it to be true.
Forget what you thought I was, forget all the impossibilities in the equation. I wanted to prove to you that you could see in my waters when they stopped shivering, your face. Clear, clearer than ever before.
I wanted us to flood everything, cities and towns. To be a force together. To do and undo, to make and unmake.
I am talking about thunderstorms and hurricanes that kill people and ravage countries.
I am talking about floods that render habitations desolate. I am talking about all that water, the type that buries entire houses and stops civilization for a minute.
I wanted us to also be a secret fount. A place for lovers. A sanctuary for just two.
I couldn’t wait to have you in me. To incarnate more water. To have it grow in my waters and one day, spill out of me crying water.
I should have said this a long time ago. There is so much I should have said. But you know what you do to me. I cannot write about you without returning to the flood. Without seeing all the ridges and the hollowed trace lines it left in this muddy brown earth.
Without going into places that drown me.
Ebele Mọgọ is a Doctor of Public Health, writer and impact entrepreneur. She is on Twitter and Instagram as @ebyral
Art by Michelle Johnsen
Michelle Johnsen (art editor) is a nature and portrait photographer in Lancaster, PA, as well as an amateur herbalist and naturalist. Her work has been featured by It’s Modern Art, Susquehanna Style magazine, Permaculture Activist magazine, EcoWatch.com, EarthFirst! Journal, Lancaster Farm Fresh Cooperative, and used as album art for Grandma Shake!, Anna & Elizabeth, and Liz Fulmer Music. Michelle’s photos have also been stolen by AP, weather.com, The Daily Mail, and Lancaster Newspapers. You can contact her at mjphoto717 [at] gmail.com.