The next morning the world still turns. I wake not to beeps, but to my own turbulent heart. Across the street, a cock crows and a child laughs. I gingerly step from bed—my leg brace propped beneath the sheet—and feel the weight of it on my ankle like a lead bird. Already my body is a negotiation between flesh and gravity.
I move to the window. Clouds drift indolently across an early sky painted in shades of mango. Smoke from a distant bushfire curls up into blue, primal shapes. Outside, a street vendor hawks papayas and sweet yams from a wooden cart. The ordinary routine of Ghana morning flows beyond the pane. I still feel weak, but each breath is a gift: it reminds me of everything I stood to lose.
I notice something odd: a sparrow perched on the windowsill. Its tiny head turns and peers in at me. We stare at each other. For a moment, I swear I see every feather: emerald-green shafts framing ebony. Then it blinks and launches into the sky with a flutter that reverberates down my spine. I watch it rise straight up in a sudden burst, tumbling midair as if caught in an invisible updraft. My jaw drops. In the next instant, the sparrow rights itself and glides away on steady wings. Did I just see it float on an unseen breeze?
Shaking off unease, I tell myself it was imagination. The world is waking, and my mind is still cloudy. I step away from the window. I need caffeine to sort these thoughts.
In the kitchen, sunlight falls warm on earthen walls. I find the chipped blue mug my mother painted when I was a child. I fill it with coffee from the percolator still warm on the stove. The familiar smell is grounding. I curl my fingers around the ceramic. It is heavy in my hand, reassuringly solid. I lift it to my lips and take a careful sip. The sensation is crisp and bitter; for a moment I close my eyes to savor it.
Then something peculiar happens. The coffee's weight shifts in my hand. It feels lighter, like a glider catching a gentle gust. I look down just in time to see the mug lift from my grasp. It hovers for a heartbeat, then drifts upward toward the kitchen ceiling. The movement is languid, as if caught in a silk current. I snatch at the air. The mug slows its ascent as if resisting me, then drops back with a clunk on the counter. My coffee spills in a dark arc across the granite. Brown liquid snakes in rivulets down the tiles.
A jolt of panic fires through me. My breath catches. My heart pounds against my ribs like a djembe drum. I whirl in slow circles, each motion deliberate and cautious, as if even a blink might send forks leaping. The mug lies broken at my feet, shards glittering in morning light. My kitchen, once familiar, now feels alien—like a physics lab gone wrong.
I rush to the back door, nearly slipping on the spilled coffee, and burst outside into the narrow alley behind my home. Fresh earth smells rise from the soil. A chicken pecks inquisitively at a spillage of grain, then leaps straight up and freezes mid-air as if startled by an unseen force. With a soft thud it lands, feathers ruffling in confusion. Birds caw overhead, alarmed.
Over the neighbor's wall, a tall man in patched cloth stops raking his garden. He squints at me with narrowed eyes. "Obasi Mensah," he calls in Twi, "what is this ghost-light you're calling down when no fire burns?" He shakes his head and resumes tending his maize.
I do not answer. My heart thuds in my chest like a warning drum. I wrap an old kente shawl around my shoulders and sit on the porch steps, the sun already warming the ground beneath me. The world feels off-kilter, like notes in a song that suddenly sharpen. I breathe in slow, trying to steady my racing mind.
Later I try experiments. Of course. Science demands it. I grab the pencil lying on the table—dark wood and graphite. I will it to float. I lift a finger just an inch above it. At first nothing. My heart eases to a steady beat. I glance sideways at the pencil as if it were shy. I focus. Slowly, imperceptibly, it trembles. It shifts. Then it pirouettes on the table's edge as if drawn upward by a silent string. My breath catches as it hops off and drifts to the ceiling.
My belly knots. I reach out and snatch the pencil from midair, slamming it back onto the table. The crash rattles the room. I grab a heavy book—Einstein's Field Equations Simplified—and open it on the table. Words blur before my eyes: "spacetime curvature," "geodesic," "tensor." I clamp the book shut and set it down. The weight in my hands feels different now. My pulse races.
Pulling upward on light objects and pinning heavier ones down… My mind reels. This isn't a nightmare. This is gravity in my palms.
Later that day I venture to my lab. The sun is high; its glare bounces off polished instruments. My workspace is a humble room of sensors and wires, a chalkboard scrawled with equations—from Newton's laws to bits of Sanskrit I once tried to learn. All that genius feels trivial now against what I hold.
I gather a dozen objects: a billiard ball, a gold chain, a cage of earthworms, a small pendulum, even a handheld electric fan. I line them on the table. First, the pendulum: a brass bob on a string. It swings naturally at 1.5 hertz. I hold a finger just under its pivot. The swing tightens; its arc jerks faster, as if I were dragging the Moon toward me. Next, the electric fan. I flip the switch; it hums steadily. I will its blades to feel heavy. They groan and slow under my influence, nearly stopping, as if each push from me adds weight.
Next, the gold chain. Normally limp, it stiffens in my grasp like a steel rod. I let go; it droops, dropping to the table with a soft clink. The cage of earthworms sends them wriggling to one side. Outside, distant thunder rumbles inexplicably though the sky is clear. The earth around me hums quietly.
I step back and place both hands on the table. My breath steadies. It is too soon to shatter reality's fragile shell any further. Already, I feel a crack widening in the fabric of normalcy around me.
That night I climb onto my roof under the Malian sky. Stars whirl overhead like flecks of silver light on a black cloth. I pour water from a tin cup into the gutter. Instead of flowing down, it swirls in dizzying circles, briefly climbing before spilling over the edge, as if obeying a hidden will. The world itself feels unsteady—like standing on the deck of a ship at sea after a storm.
Under the wide, fathomless heavens, I whisper a prayer to Asase Yaa, Mother Earth. "If I am a tool of yours," I say quietly into the warm breeze, "grant me wisdom to bear this. And if I am cursed, grant me strength." Somewhere a nightjar calls in response.
I think of my ancestors—farmers and astronomers, storytellers and scientists. Even the Dogon of Mali watched the skies and learned their secrets. Perhaps I am next in line: a child of the earth who carries gravity in his veins. A Ghanaian proverb floats to mind: "He who does not learn one thing, learns another." I have learned the truth of that tonight.
The breeze shifts. I feel the weight of the sky pressing down, heavy with expectation. I am awake now, and the world will never be the same.