The eviction notice has the texture of heavy cream,
a three-hundred-gram bond crested with an elephant logo.
It sits on the polyester table beside the bruised cups.
Outside, the excavator is already chewing the mango trees,
its yellow oily arm dripping grease onto the Maroko marsh.
They call it ‘regeneration,’ a word borrowed from lizards.
But the tail does not grow back for the displaced.
The mud houses here remember three generations of watery groundnut soup
and the damp steam of torn danshiki drying over iron grates.
Now, the red brick is scraped clean by men in big agbada.
A surveyor measures the light with a laser level,
slicing our sitting room into precise squares of rentable air.
He does not see the shadow where the upright piano stood,
or the grease mark where a heavy shoulder leaned to rest
every Tuesday after the late shift at the Apapa docks.
The new glass is double laminated to keep out the noise of the poor.
It reflects only the custom plates of passing Mercedes-Benz
and the sky, which remains neutral,
unbothered by who owns the dirt beneath the potholed road.
We pack the teacups in old Daily Times paper,
wrapping our history in yesterday’s stock reports,
and pack out before the concrete turns cold.

Ayo Ayoola-Amale is a Nigerian poet and lawyer born in Jos, Nigeria. Her work investigates economic disparity, inequality, and the resilience of the working class. She is the founder of the Splendors of Dawn Poetry Foundation.

Poetry submissions to thursdaypoems@gmail.com