Six steps from the back gate to the cab.
Three lies told before dawn:
“I swear I won’t cry.”
“I promise I’ll call from London.”
“This doesn’t mean I’m gone forever.”

Abuja at 5:42 am is
the tail-end of a prayer slipping through mist,
a woman in rollers coaxing flame from coals,
my cats yowling behind the kitchen wall,
—a wire pulled taut, waiting for the spark.

I do not look back at the compound.
I know what I’d find:
a plastic chair tilted from last night’s goodbye,
my mother’s wet, pleading eyes—
What’s left of that country
will wear you thin.

Five winter jackets
squeezed into soft-shelled carry-ons,
three rows down comes a wailing baby.
A plane full of glasses and second guesses.
What even counts as beginning anymore?

Over Chad, I want to scream.
“Wait!”
“I think there’s been a mistake.”
I want to tell the pilot,
tug the sleeve of a stewardess—
At what altitude does regret become useless?

By Algeria, I practice my reasons.
Grad school. The weather. A system that works.
No. I didn’t japa, this was a clever detour—
a season to learn. A year to grow.
A wager on return. I insist!

By their idols, Heathrow.
A slick cathedral of runway and ice.
I have become a woman fluent in departure.
She drinks oat milk and complains about taxes.

I do not pack the last mint tea.
I carry a visa instead,
pressed into green pages,
a conditional love letter
from this country that does not know me yet.
Just a plastic BRP card.

And you—
you’ll say it’s not that deep.
Just a pane. A stretch of sky,
for dreams and the dreamer.
But I watch home vanish before me.
And I fear January
is a one-way ticket
in disguise.

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Arifin Salleh on Unsplash