Leaving Lagos

The panic attacks began at nsukka and
I was a wind blowing southward.
moments paused in doubts, fears and taboos.

The ache attacks started at Saint Peters chapel near hilltop
I was a nun in tight jeans and a t-shirt when
others prayed, I cursed.
moments lingered in months of penury and penning.
the red colored breeze flirted with my prayer papers.

The groundnut hawker eyed the papers and wailed into the distance

I craved an open field and wings to fly
but the muscles of my heart
fluttered to be wrenched out
and flung into the red dust.
the landscape stirred in my bowels
a bowel movement.

Lagos beckoned...a horny man in jail
we had a romance near mutual...
his days of deprivation were caught like flies in a red net
and the flies were set loose in my mouth
I swallowed, gulped, blinded by bright lights.
the streets of Lagos were patches of excreta with giant flies

It was nothing about the odour, nor the buzzes...nothing about the roving
eyes of married rich men
but a wind blowing southward

Sometimes the streets of Lagos were long and vacant
long treks, sweaty days, falling crusts of menstrual blood
the cakes of blood became blades cutting through my strides
and every destination--a dead-end.

Like a stubborn tattoo,
a fever was stamped on my forehead

but the stamp became
my open field
my wings
and the wind—a tide I ride.