by Esi Edugyan
Norfolk stank. Its docks stank of tobacco, of lead, of crushed reeds and especially of cotton, white bolls of it glowing like plucked eyes on their boughs. It stank of unwashed deckhands and mutton stew and offal steaming in the gutters along the harbour streets. It stank of mud and turpentine and stale perfumes oozing from the pores of the prostitutes in their greasy dresses. The pungency of it all after the long days at sea left me light-headed, and I stared all around me, slack-jawed, like a simpleton. For what a grand city was Norfolk, despite all!
6S
Esi Edugyan lives in Victoria, British Columbia. Her six sentences are excerpted from her 2018 novel Washington Black.
