To photograph someone is a subliminal murder,

says Sontag. I believed this. It is known a camera

will steal your iré. How it is first to eat at

restaurants, my mother snapping up amala, ewa,

a bed of efo tete. Scentless, 2D, each meal

collaged in a Facebook album. Reading Nietzsche, I

wonder if the aperture is a starved eye that needs to

be fed. My mother takes more photos now—not of

food, but portraits: my grandmother in her care

home, clutching a bag of agbalumo. Her steel-ribbed

walker, X-rays of her chest. There’s a video of her

slurping peppersoup, flashing smiles for her

daughter, a fragment I replay as I enter her ward,

my camera the only machine that can save her.