I Travel Home

I travel home to remember the sound of morning
 I choose the evening to pray, I remember this as it is
 For when the city returns
 When the sound of the green-line trolley cars and skyscrapers
 Surround my senses, diminishing this version of my imagination
 I will remember this
 The silence and the nighttime
 I will remember red sand on bare feet
 My skin sticky glistening in the sun
 My hair like untamed wool
 I will remember the air thick of Africa
 I will remember my mother in the night
 And the children she cares for
 I will see them once more as they play
 Peeking at me from the crack in the doorway
 I will remember my aunty, and her famous jellof rice
 Asking me in flawless Esan native tongue
 "Ehen, Iyeoka ofure, onegbe?"
 That means, "Iyeoka how is everything you're too skinny"
 And I, struggling to keep up, clumsily responding
 "Butayay aunti?" that means, I don't know what you just said
 I will remember the marketplace
 And the women selling smoked corn and plantain
 I will remember the taste of moi-moi and egusi soup, ogbono soup, pepper soup, dodo
 The sound of Doris pounding yam
 Fresh oranges from the Arimogija farm
 When Boston city lights mask the majesty of my favorite constellations
 I will remember the moon
 Pregnant and smiling at me because I am a poet
 As if she knows that I am invested enough to write about it
 And because I am a poet
 I will remember the unseen
 The homeless, and the beggars, the roadside wanderers
 The people just trying to survive
 I remember the children roadside selling cell phones and unwanted trinkets
 I will remember the local roads beaten and eroded by rain and time
 Huts built beside a 15-story hotel sky rise
 So many having so much
 Neighbours with others living with nothing but the hand-me-downs on their backs
 And the realities of poverty crushing their promises of tomorrow
 I choose to leave behind my rose colored glasses in my grandfather's village
 Because when my plane finally lands back in Boston
 I need to believe that Nigeria changes me every single time
 Call it a small doze of third world reality, what ever you call it
 These are the moments that teach us how to recognize what we take for granted
 Constant electricity and clean water
 Hospitals on every corner
 The opportunity for us to rise beyond our native borders
 These are the details that risk a fate of becoming lost or forgotten
 Like sounds of the morning
 Because when the city returns
 When the sound of the green-line trolley cars and skyscrapers surrounds my senses
 Diminishing this version of my imagination
 I will remember this
 I need to remember this