ARDENT

I sit in the chair.

The good chair I loved since I came in here.

The plants are all still alive.

Dr. Yetunde looks at me.

She does not say anything.

I do not say anything.

The room holds us both.

Then I cry.

Not about anything specific. Just the accumulated weight of six weeks finding the room that is safe enough to release it in.

Dr. Yetunde does not move. She does not hand me tissues immediately. She lets the crying be what it is. Not a symptom to be managed but a thing that needs to happen, that has been needing to happen for six weeks, that has been dammed up behind the Imani work and the daily functioning and the I am fine and the I am tired.

When it settles she passes the tissues.

I take them.

I look at the plants.

“Sewa”, she says.

“Yes.”

“What are we not talking about?” she says.

I look at my hands.

The ring.

“I received the verse this morning”, I say. “Romeo sent it. After six days.”

“How did it feel?” she says.

“Like—”

I stop.

“Like being found. In a place I had been hiding and not telling anyone I was hiding in.”

She writes something.

“And what is the hiding place?” she says.

I look at the plants.

All still alive.

I open my mouth.

I close it.

She waits.

This is what she does. She waits with the specific patience of someone who knows the thing is ready to come up and is simply holding the space for its arrival.

I look at the ring.

I think about the room in the Maitama house.

The possibility built in.

I think about Dr. Amaka’s voice on a Tuesday in February.

Not impossible. Not a closed door. But complicated.

I think about three weeks of carrying it alone.

I think about the verse.

He will rejoice over you with singing.

And I think about the thing Dr. Yetunde asked me in a session three months ago, when I was first learning what it felt like to receive care without managing it:

What would it feel like to bring the full weight of the thing, not the manageable version, into this room?

I look at Dr. Yetunde.

“I was diagnosed with PMOS three weeks ago”, I say.

I do not tell her everything in the session.

I tell her the diagnosis. The fertility fear. The engagement doubt. The six weeks of silence.

She receives each piece with the same composed attention — not alarmed, not dramatic, the specific steadiness of a woman who has been holding space for hard things for twenty years and knows that her steadiness is the container that makes the telling possible.

She asks questions.

The right ones.

When did you first feel the doubt about the engagement?

What does the doubt tell you about what you believe Romeo’s love is contingent on?

If the roles were reversed — if Romeo had received a diagnosis that complicated your future together — what would you want him to do?

That last one lands the hardest.

I sit with it for a long time.

“I would want him to tell me”, I say. “Immediately. Not because I can or need to fix it. But because he should not carry it alone.”

“Yes”, she says.

We sit with that.

“He sent the verse this morning”, I say. “After six days. He said: I am sorry for the silence. It was never about you.”

She looks at me.

“And?” she says.

“And I cried at the dining table”, I say. “For the first time in six days.”

“What did crying release?” she says.

I think about it.

“The pretense”, I say.

“That I was managing. That I was fine. That what I was carrying was not as heavy as it was.”

I pause.

“It released the pretense.”

She nods.

“Sewa”, she says.

“Yes.”

“I want to say something”, she says, “that I need you to receive fully before you respond.”

“Okay.”

“You came into this office today and you cried for eleven minutes without speaking”, she says.

“And in six months of sessions I have never seen you do that. You have cried — productively, with language, naming what the tears are about. Today you cried without words.”

She holds my gaze.

“That is not a breakdown. That is a breakthrough. That is six weeks of carried weight finding the first safe exit it has been offered.”

A pause.

“Your body knew this room was safe before your mind was ready to use it.”

I look at the plants.

“I cancelled last week”, I say.

“I know”, she says. “But you came back.”

“I almost didn’t”, I say.

“But you did”, she says. “That matters more than the cancellation.”

I look at the ring.

“Dr. Yetunde”, I say.

“Yes.”

“I need to tell him”, I say. “Romeo. About the PMOS. I need to tell him.”

“Yes”, she says. “You do.”

“But I am afraid”, I say.

“I know that too”, she says. “Tell me specifically what you are afraid of.”

I breathe.

“That he will look at me and see a woman who cannot give him what he wants”, I say.

“And that it will change something. Everything. Not immediately. Over time. A slow shift in the way he sees me that I will not be able to stop once it starts. That he will grow to hate me.”

She is quiet.

“Is that consistent”, she says carefully, “with months of evidence about who Romeo is?”

I look at my hands.

“No”, I say.

“What is consistent with the evidence?” she says.

I think about the rooibos tracked through three suppliers.

The shoulder remembered from October.

The month five budget resolved without touching the timeline.

The room designed with the possibility built in.

I am not going anywhere. I just need to think.

“That he will stay”, I say.

“And that he will want to know. And that keeping it from him is — it is taking something from him that he has earned the right to.”

“Yes”, she says.

We sit.

“When will you tell him?” she says.

“This week”, I say. “I will tell him this week.”

She nods.

“And Sewa”, she says. “One more thing.”

“Yes.”

“The engagement doubt”, she says.

“I want you to examine it closely before our next session. Not to dismiss it but to understand its root. Because when fear wears the costume of wisdom it can convince us that removing ourselves from a good thing is a noble act.”

She holds my gaze.

“Is the doubt about the relationship or is it about what you believe you deserve in it?”

I look at the plants.

All still alive.

All still alive.

“The second one”, I say quietly.

“Yes”, she says. “That is what I thought.”

Get 10% off a group subscription

I am on the rooftop when Ọrọ calls.

8:42 p.m.

The Abuja evening. The harmattan still faintly in the air. The city below doing what it does.

“Adéṣẹwà”, she says.

“Ọrọ”, I say.

A pause.

Not the usual Ọrọ pause.

“How are you?” she says.

“I am good. I went to Dr. Yetunde today”, I say.

“Good”, she says. “How was it?”

“Hard”, I say. “Good. Hard-good.”

“The best kind”, she says.

A pause.

“Sewa”, she says.

“Yes.”

“I want to ask you something and I need you to answer me honestly.”

I look at the city.

“Okay”, I say.

“How is Romeo?” she says. “Really.”

I am quiet.

The city below.

The peonies on the rooftop ledge. I brought them up this evening, Friday’s flowers, a week old now, still standing in the specific stubborn way of peonies that have been given good water.

“We had a fight last week”, I say.

“I know”, she says. “You told me about the curriculum thing.”

“It was not about the curriculum”, I say.

A pause.

“No”, she says. “I did not think it was.”

I look at the city.

“Ọrọ.”

“Yes.”

“Something is wrong”, I say. “I feel like everything is falling apart.”

The silence on her end is the held-breath kind.

“I am listening”, she says.

Quietly.

The girl who became a woman while I watched. The woman who is my person in the way that means she has always been ready to hold what I bring.

I breathe.

“I was diagnosed with PMOS three weeks ago”, I say.

“That’s a long time to bear all this”, she says. Eventually.

“Yes.”

“Alone.”

“Yes.”

“Sewa.”

Her voice is not the firm voice yet. It is the prior voice — the one that arrives before the firm voice, the one that is simply — grief. On my behalf.

“Oh, Sewa.”

“I know”, I say.

“Why?” she says. “Why didn't you tell me? Or Romeo?”

“Because—” I stop.

Find the true answer.

“Because naming it makes it real. And if it is real then I have to do something with it. And the thing I have to do with it is tell Romeo. And telling Romeo means — means having the conversation I am not ready to have.”

“About kids?”, she says.

“About kids”, I confirm.

A pause.

“Tell me what you are afraid of”, she says.

And I do.

All of it. The fertility statistics. The engagement doubt. The thought — the specific, unwelcome, shame-adjacent thought — that I should remove myself from the relationship before my body’s complications become his burden.

When I finish Ọrọ is quiet for a moment.

Then she says

“Sewa.”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember”, she says, “what you said to me the night I told you I was afraid Tunde would leave when he found out how broken I was underneath the surface?”

I think.

“I said—” I pause. “I said: Ọrọ, a man who chooses you when you are whole is ordinary. A man who chooses you when he sees the broken parts is the one worth keeping.”

“Yes”, she says. “You said that. To me. Years ago.”

I look at the city.

“I said that”, I say.

“You said that”, she confirms. “And I need you to hear it too. Now. In your own voice. Because you gave me those words when I needed them and now you need them back.”

The rooftop.

The city below.

The stubborn peonies.

“Romeo is not ordinary”, Ọrọ says.

“You know this. He noticed the symptoms before you did and nudged you to visit the doctor and does not know yet what the doctor found. He designed a room in your house with the possibility built in — not the certainty, the possibility, which means he already knows that life does not always cooperate with plans and he is not afraid of that.”

She pauses.

“That man is not going to look at a PMOS diagnosis and leave.”

I am quiet.

“Tell him”, she says.

“I know”, I say.

“Sewa.”

“I know, Ọrọ.”

“When?” she says.

I look at the city.

The verse from this morning arrives again in my chest.

He will rejoice over you with singing.

Romeo sent that.

Romeo, who has been quiet for six days, chose that verse for this specific morning.

“This weekend”, I say.

“Good”, she says.

A pause.

“And Sewa”, she says.

Her voice shifts. The Ọrọ voice that is not just soft but is warm in the way of someone who has been your person long enough to know when to hold and when to push.

“You are not broken. PMOS is not a character flaw. It is not a punishment. It is not evidence that you do not deserve the good thing you have found.”

She pauses.

“It is a medical condition that millions of women manage and live full, beautiful, mother-filled lives with. And even if the path to those lives is longer or more complicated for you — you will not walk it alone.”

I look at the ring.

The engagement ring.

The ring he put on my finger on a rooftop full of peonies in front of everyone we love.

“I know”, I say.

“Do you?” she says.

I think about it properly.

“I am learning to”, I say.

“That is enough”, she says. “For tonight, that is enough.”

We stay on the phone for another hour.

Not about the PMOS. About everything else. The Imani cases.

Oh, I somehow changed the name during all of this. I guess I couldn't stand with TITO when sitting with my own truth was inconvenient.

The Maitama house. The A-Z dates paused at Q. Anything and everything.

When she hangs up I sit on the rooftop for a long time.

The city below.

The stubborn peonies.

The verse in my chest.

The text I have not sent yet.

Inside: soon.

She does not respond to the verse on Monday.

I know she received it. The double tick arrives immediately, which means she was on her phone, which means she read it. The absence of a response is its own response and I have spent enough time learning the language of Sewa Coker to read it accurately.

She received it. She is sitting with it. She is not ready yet.

I wait.

Tuesday I send the verse again. The daily one. Back to the rhythm, the commitment, the thing that was never about the fight and should not have been suspended because of it.

Proverbs 3:5-6. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.

No response.

But the tick turns blue. She read it.

Wednesday.

Isaiah 41:10. Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

No response.

But the tick turns blue.

I pray.

Specifically. By name. The way I always pray for her. Not the general covering prayer but the targeted one. The one that names what I can see and asks God to hold what I cannot.

Lord, she is carrying something. I do not know what it is. But You know. And I am asking You to be in it with her — in the specific place where she has not let anyone else in yet. Meet her there. Before I can.

Thursday.

Psalm 34:18. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

The tick turns blue immediately.

Five minutes later my phone buzzes.

Sewa.

Not a text. A voice note.

I hold the phone.

I press play.

Her voice. The real voice — not the managed one, not the content creator voice, not the Ministry voice. The rooftop voice. The 3 a.m. voice.

“Hiiii. I received all. All the verses. Thank you for coming back.. I am so sorry I withdrew and shut you out.”

A pause.

“I have something to tell you. Not over the phone. Can we meet this weekend? Friday evening. I could come to the house.”

Another pause.

“I am okay. I just — I need to say something that I should have said a long time ago. And I want to say it in our study. I've missed being in there. With you.”

The voice note ends.

I type back.

“Friday evening. The study. I will be there, Tesoro.”

A pause.

Then her response.

“Thank you, Reo.”

Three words.

The pet name she has been using since February. The short version. The one nobody else uses. The one that shortened the unshortenable because she is the one person I would allow it from.

Reo.

I put the phone down.

I look at the wall.

I pick up my Bible.

I open it not to a specific passage but let it fall open.

It falls open to Song of Solomon.

Chapter 8. Verse 7.

Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot sweep it away.

I sit with that for a long time.

•∆•∆•∆•∆•∆•∆•∆•∆•∆•∆•∆•

Friday.

6 p.m.

I arrive at the Maitama house before her.

I unlock the door. Her key and mine. The two keys that Bisi’s team cut when the first room was finished, the keys that make this house already ours before we have moved in and I go to the study.

The reading chair at the right height.

The lamp. The shelves beginning to fill.

Her books and mine finding their places together on the same walls.

I sit in the reading chair.

I wait.

At 6:17 the front door opens.

Her footsteps in the hall.

The study door opens.

She stands in the doorway.

She looks at me.

I look at her.

Ten days — no, more than ten days — of distance in a room that has her books on the shelves and my chair by the window and both of our keys in our respective pockets.

“Reoo”, she says.

“Sewa”, I say.

She comes in.

She sits on the floor. Not a chair, the floor, the way she sat on the floor of the empty bedroom on the night of the big fight. The way she sits when something is too large to receive in a chair.

I get out of the reading chair.

I sit on the floor across from her.

The shelves around us.

The lamp casting its specific light.

The Abuja Friday evening outside the study window.

“Reo”, she says.

“Evie.”

“I need to tell you something”, she says.

“I know”, I say.

She looks at me.

“You know?” she says.

“I know you have been carrying something”, I say.

“I do not know what it is. I really don't know why you haven't told me but I have been waiting for you to be ready to tell me.”

She looks at her hands.

The ring.

“In January”, she says. “You noticed some things. I complained about how much more irregular my cycles have been for a while now. The fatigue. You recommended I see a doctor.”

“Yes”, I say.

“I went three weeks ago”, she says. “Alone and I did not tell you I was going.”

I wait.

“The doctor—” she stops.

Starts again.

“I was diagnosed with PMOS. Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome.”

She looks at the ring.

“I have known for six weeks. I did not tell anyone.”

A pause.

“Until this week.”

The study.

The shelves.

The lamp.

I receive it.

All of it.

I do not rush into the space.

I let it be what it is. The thing she has been carrying, now placed between us on the floor of our study, no longer hers alone to hold.

“Adéṣẹwà”, I say.

She looks up.

Her eyes are full but she is not crying. She is watching my face attentively like someone who has been afraid of what they would find there.

I hold her gaze.

I go quiet. Just stating into the horizon. Processing what she just told me.

Then I prayed inwardly.

“God, help me. I heard what she said. And I love her regardless. I've met women with this condition bear kids. I met them in various outreaches. Now, it's me. Help me to handle this appropriately. Help me.”

We sit still for a few minutes.

“Thank you for telling me”, I say.

She exhales.

Small.

“I was afraid”, she says.

“I know”, I say as I draw her into me and she rests her head on my chest.

“Of what you would—”

“I know”, I say again. “I know what you were afraid of.”

“And?” she says.

I look at her.

Across the study floor.

“Sewa”, I say. “Look at me.”

She looks at me.

“PMOS is not a curse”, I say. “It is not a condition on my love. It is not something that changes what I said on that rooftop or what I said to your father.”

I hold her gaze.

“You are not a problem to me. You are the person I am building a life with. And whatever that life requires — whatever the path looks like, however complicated the door — I am walking with you.”

She is very still.

“Romeo—”

“There are two rooms in this house”, I say, “that we designed for our kids. Oh. Yes, I have always wanted kids of mine. I've thought about having kids with you. And with PMOS, it's not a 100% guarantee or infertility. And even if it is, I still want to spend my life with you. I want you, Adesewa, to be the one I do this thing called life with. Kids or not. We can adopt children. We can try other paths. We'll do the research together. I want you.”

A pause.

“PMOS does not close the room of US. It changes the path to it. And we will walk the path. Together. Whatever it looks like.”

She looks at me for a long moment.

Then the tears come.

The real ones.

She does not try to manage them.

I move across the floor and I sit beside her. She puts her head on my shoulder and I put my arm around her as we sit in the study of the house we are building together, on the floor, and I hold her while she cries.

I do not fix it.

I do not solve it.

I hold her.

This is what she needs.

Not the co-founder.

Not the reviewer.

Just — this.

Me.

Still here.

Still looking at her.

Still not going anywhere.

Leave a comment

Narrator's Nook

Shame isolates. This is its primary function — not to protect us from judgement but to convince us that we are uniquely unworthy of the love that is already present. Sewa’s PMOS shame did not arrive because Romeo gave her any reason to feel it.

It arrived because shame does not need a reason. It feeds on silence and grows in the dark and tells you, with complete conviction, that the poeple who loves you most will love you least when they know the full truth.

The truth, in every case, is the opposite.

Ọrọ giving Sewa back her own words — the ones she said four years ago about a man who chooses you when he sees the broken parts — is the series completing its most important circle.

Sewa has been the one who shows up for people. Sewa has been the one who says the true thing. Now her own truth is returning to her through the mouth of the person she showed up for. This is what community does. This is what the people who love you are for.

Romeo on the study floor saying: PMOS does not close the room — is the whole series in one sentence.

She is not a problem to be solved.

She is the person he is building a life with.

The path changes but the building process does not stop.

Share