I Am Iyuku Road Poem by Martins Akhoeneto

A Dramatic Monologue

I am Iyuku Road.
Once, morning found me without suspicion.

Motorcycles stitched the villages together.
Women returned from market
with tomatoes warm from other hands.
Schoolchildren dragged their slippers through dust
and argued about mangoes,
about football,
about who had cheated in yesterday's game.

At Jattu-Uzairue,
where the road knows the old turn
and the red earth shows through
beneath the patched edges of asphalt,
people passed through me
without learning to look behind themselves.

I was only a road.

Then the forest discovered
what a road can carry.

Now evening does not enter me.
It negotiates.

It stands at the tree line
and counts the headlights
as though each were a coin
someone has forgotten to hide.

Three days after the first warning,
another vehicle came.

Inside it were Mallam MD Tasiu
and his wife—
two people travelling
toward the ordinary destination
called home.

I remember the headlights.

I remember the stopping.

I remember how the road went suddenly still,
how the familiar red earth
seemed to draw itself inward.

Then they were gone.

Not their tyres.
Not the vehicle.

Them.

As if two names
had been lifted from the earth
with a pair of careful hands.

Later, another woman came with her child.

The forest took them too.

A mother and her child:
the smallest possible family
against the largest possible wilderness.

Perhaps the child asked a question.

Perhaps the mother answered.

Perhaps she said, 'We are going home, '
because sometimes a mother must manufacture
a future with nothing but her voice.

The forest does not record promises.

It keeps people.

It keeps footprints
until rain edits them.

It keeps the narrow paths
where the bush has grown back
over the memory of passing feet.

It keeps the places
where headlights cannot reach.

That is what frightens me.

Not the forest itself.

Its ability to remain ordinary.

A bird still settles on a branch.
Leaves still bargain with the wind.
Ants still carry what is larger than themselves.

And somewhere along my familiar stretch,
the roadside sign still stands
with its weather-eaten letters,
pointing travellers onward
as though onward were still
a harmless direction.

Somewhere, a woman is waiting
beside a telephone that has become
a piece of furniture.

She calls.

The number rings.

Hope answers before anyone does.

Then hope is returned
to her pocket.

She calls again.

This is how a family spends a night:
not sleeping,
not waking,
but moving repeatedly
between two impossible countries.

At another house,
someone may have left the porch light on.

Nobody says why.

Nobody needs to.

Fear has its own electricity.

It moves from door to door
without wires.

It enters through the smallest opening.

It sits at the dining table.

It counts the empty chair.

It learns the names of people
who never knew they would become
names on somebody's prayer.

And I, Iyuku Road,
have become a witness
without a mouth.

I have carried their tyres.
I have held their shadows.
I have watched them leave home
believing, as people should,
that roads lead somewhere.

Now travellers slow down
when they reach my trees.

They study the roadside
the way a patient studies
the face of a doctor
before asking for the diagnosis.

Every approaching headlight
has acquired a second meaning.

Every motorcycle is examined
before it is recognized.

Every stranger carries
the possibility of becoming
a reason for a family to wait.

This is how a place loses peace:

not all at once,

but one ordinary journey at a time.

So let those who carry authority
come here.

Let their boots enter
where tyres stop.

Let searchlights break
the private darkness beneath the trees.

Let every footpath be questioned,
every clearing,
every abandoned shelter,
every silence
that has lasted too long.

Let the forest surrender
what it has swallowed.

Not for statistics.

Not for another statement
that will cool on paper.

For the woman waiting beside the phone.

For the child who may still believe
that every night ends with a familiar door.

For the empty chair.

For the names.

For home.

Because I remember what I was.

I remember tyres arriving
without hesitation.

I remember children
who did not know
that trees could conceal men.

I remember wives sitting beside husbands
with nothing in their hands
except the confidence of getting home.

I remember being a road,
not a warning.

And tonight,

when another headlight enters me,

I will hold my breath.

Not because roads have lungs,

but because somewhere
a family is listening
for one more vehicle
to return.

And I have carried enough people away.

I want, this time,

to carry someone home.