I am awake and listening in the dark,

hazy twigs of lemon trees scratching against the fabric

of the night—I smell them. I hear the silken trill

of passerine birds by the lake house. The moon

is a gauzy blue like on the cover of Gatsby.

The birds make their shadows against it.

I've walked from one life into another, opened locks,

bought a notebook at Obalende to write things

that are now forgotten—light peeks in through

the brown curtains where I am hunched over my

writing on the mattress. It feels like a Mediterranean

dream. Candles and cloves. Olive oil and golden light.

The unzipped bag beside my legs is full of old books,

the dog is gone, my life of wandering really just beginning.

I leave and forget to shut my windows and ground doves

make their way in—my mother wakes to a feather

floating over her mouth, her dream unfinished.

She leaves them there and they lay eggs. Handling my

things now makes her cry. Iʼm a traveller now, I want to

tell her, thinking as I sail in a ferry over the blue

river that I must find time to write. Time rushes on.

The lake is forever cold. I have worked with men

from Beirut, from Canada, from Barcelona, from Fez.

It doesn't matter in what capacity I work with them.

Lagos is too crowded on the night I return, a dizzying web.

I fall twice while scrambling to catch a bus. I lose things

as I struggle to keep up—faces, phone contacts, memories.

I do not want to build my life around the things I have lost.

I call my mother and she spends half the time crying

on the phone and the other half asking, Where have you been?

My eyes are dry. I think to mention the obvious. But

how to tell her everything—the privation, the grimness

of a life that could hardly make space for either of us.

2020 was a bad year. The next year we would come out again

in the sun. And in that year I fell in love. For the first time,

I bought a woman flowers. She smelt always of pineapples.

She helped me. And in 2022, I began dreaming again.

I dreamt of the future. I dreamt of a house. It had large windows.

It falls on me to build things up again—the heavy legacy of loss.

I hear the lake in my dream. My body grows tender.

Celine sleeps beside me as the birds sing beside that house.

I stay awake dreaming, quietly desperate for whatever matters most.