Mary is talking about love and I am looking at her lips, visualizing how it would feel in my mouth. She knows what’s on my mind, so she smiles a bit while saying “Love can never be equal.”

Barely attentive, I ask “How?”

And she says that I would see.

We meet and talk about love a couple more times before embarking on a relationship, then marriage.

At night, after rocking on me and lying on my crafted chest, a testimony of supplements and heavy lifting, Mary talks about having a child. A girl, she says and I say, A boy.  We laugh and we sleep.

The next morning, I do not wake up.

Mary slaps me and my head only responds to the force of the slap. She screams and the neighbours come and take me to the mortuary.

About seven years later, when Mary takes our twins, a boy and a girl, to Ghana on an expedition, she meets you and like a magnet, you guys connect.

You tell Mary to stop talking about me all the time.
She does but doesn’t stop thinking about me. Even when she is on you, it is my face she visualizes. After, she lies on your dry chest, listening to your heartbeat, marvelling at the slower beat compared to mine that once drummed against my ribs.

Mary’s stomach becomes round and on the day she felt the child’s first movement, you do not come home. Colleagues claim you left earlier; police report a car accident. A closed casket.

The twins have a brother, a perfect replica of you.

When the lines on Mary’s face tell tales of her years on earth, her children arc around her, each a master in their vocation, and watch her die.