Before the Light Leaves

Chimamanda Adam has spent a long time drawing the things she cannot say.
Her sketchbooks are filled with lonely places, unfinished thoughts, and a world that has slowly begun to lose its color. She has stopped believing that beautiful things are meant to stay. Love, especially, is something she would rather keep at a distance.

Then she meets Malachi Afolabi.

Malachi sees the world through a camera lens.
He photographs everything: strangers laughing on trains, sunsets disappearing behind buildings, half-finished meals, movie tickets, rainy windows, and the little moments most people forget five minutes after they happen. He keeps them because memories are easier to hold when they have somewhere to live.

There is something different about Malachi.
He is gentle when Chimamanda expects cruelty. Patient when she expects people to leave. He notices the things she tries desperately to hide, and somehow, without asking her to become someone else, he makes the world feel a little less heavy.

Soon, Chimamanda begins drawing him.
Not the sadness she is used to putting on paper, but his smile. His hands. The way he looks at her when he thinks she isn't paying attention. The ridiculous little things he does that make her laugh. Slowly, her pages begin filling with color again.

And Malachi, who had once stopped asking life for anything more, begins wanting tomorrow.
He wants movie nights and train rides with music playing through their headphones. Picnic dates that last until sunset. Stolen photographs. Inside jokes. Ordinary Tuesdays. Every tiny, forgettable moment that suddenly feels worth remembering because she is in it.

He wants a future.

There is only one problem.

Chimamanda doesn't know Malachi doesn't have much of one.