The bus to Dodoma smelled of overripe bananas and the metallic tang of old coins. It groaned as it shifted gears, the engine screaming like a wounded animal as it climbed the hills outside of Dar es Salaam. I sat in the very back row, my head leaning against the vibrating window pane. Every bump in the road sent a jolt of lightning through my shattered ribs, a reminder of the woman I had just buried in the white ash of my own mind.
I looked down at my hands. The blood was gone, washed away in the sink of a greasy terminal bathroom, but I could still feel the phantom weight of the glass shard sinking into her chest. Into my chest.
"After love, what do we have left, Leo?" I whispered, my voice barely audible over the roar of the wind through the open window.
Leo didn't answer at first. He
