Ogechi Obi

There were some wailing changes in me, each one more pressing than the last. First, my skin became impossibly soft, tender, and damp to the touch. Second, it began to smell like the sea. Next—as my boyfriend told me with my teat in his mouth—I began to taste like salt until I was too bitter to bear and we would spend our nights laying back to back, too embarrassed and disgusted to move or talk or fuck. Then, my color lost the dull gray overlay of the city skyline and turned brassy blue: my hair, my face, my teeth, all dipped in ink and polished shiny, until I became a statue sitting away in a collection. My nails turned tough like plates. I even developed headaches: spikes to the head that left me suspended in the dark for half of the day. That, I blamed on my lenses; I wore thick glasses that left me considering surgery, and then the headaches came on. I booked myself a consultation, hoping for a permanent solution.

"The Matriarch" is the 2025 winner of the Louis Begley Prize judged by Bryan Washington.