“Today I am 28. It is 2023. In Nigeria, it is illegal to do the things I did freely at the beaches in Toronto; watch my queer friends kiss under the eyes of a cloudy sun, hold hands with a woman on a rain-less night intoxicated by wine and wishfulness. I lie to a taxi driver, tell him that I have a fiancé. I show him a picture, a man. My cousin doesn’t know how often his image has saved me from lecherous men. Here, fiction can be a raft in a sea…”

For a split second, I thought about her racial calculations, not because I felt I needed to know, but because maybe, finally, someone might be like me. I knew our skin colors carried the weight of the same questions.

Or, the queer urge to almost form a cult with a straight woman.

The entire story of our entire trip from California to Michigan and also all the bigger stories and the smaller ones, too.