By Eloghosa Osunde

Your mother thinks your father will drive her mad. She says it all the time.

You have all left, or are leaving.

Maybe I need to give birth to another child. What do you think?

Can you imagine me alone in this house with the man?

You look at her when you ask. The Man as in your husband? As in, The Man you married because you were in love with him? The Man you could live with and didn’t want to live without before you started covering the house with children?

You have all left, or are leaving, she says again.

And you know which loss she is grieving.

Your mother thinks your father will drive her mad. She says it all the time.

When she talks about absence, she focuses on you, the children. She is almost begging you not to leave to where you need to go.

But you need to go, so that you don’t lose your mind. You need to go and she knows.

Can you imagine me alone — just me — in this house with your marriage? you want to ask.

But everything will break. So of course you don’t do that.

Your mother wants to be driven mad by something.

She wants to be driven out of her mind, round the bend, up a hill, smack-bang into insanity until her skull is a mangled, barely rescuable vehicle.

It’s so that maybe she would see other things — strange colors, three heads in the air, floating eyes on the wall. Other things. Anything, but his disappearance.

But isn’t it too late if it looks like the man has already left, anyway.

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