Lyrics

Before the plane
ever lifted,
a part of me
had already left Nigeria.

Not physically.
Dreams do not need passports.
I knew.
Somewhere in me,
I knew I would leave.

Then three years happened.
Three years can be a very long sentence
when you are waiting
for one answer.

I applied.
I waited.
I hoped.
I prayed.
I applied again.

Every time the door
looked close enough
to touch,
life moved the handle.
A document was missing.
A process slowed down.
A plan changed.

Something that looked
like the final step
became another beginning.
There were days
when I wondered
whether I had mistaken
persistence for stubbornness.

Yet I kept going.

There is a peculiar kind
of faith required
to continue preparing
for a future
that has not yet agreed
to arrive.

I carried that faith
like a small suitcase.
Not impressive.
Not glamorous.
Just heavy enough
to matter.

Then one day,
the airport was real.
The ticket was real.

The leaving
was no longer
a sentence beginning
with “one day.”

And I remember
what I said:
I dreamt it.
I prayed for it.
I hoped for it.
I worked for it.

And now,
I am living it.
The words sounded different
once the wheels lifted.

Three years of waiting
suddenly became
a view from above.
The country beneath me
looked smaller.
The dream
looked bigger.

Then I arrived
And strangely,
I was not shocked.
It felt familiar.
Not because I had been there.
Because I had visited
so many times
inside my imagination.

The streets were different.
The weather had its own
very serious personality.
The accents moved faster
than I expected.

Yet something in me said,
You are supposed
to be here.
that could be
the funniest thing about
certain answered prayers.

You spend years
asking God for the door,
then walk through it
and discover
the door was never
the destination.
It was the entrance.

I did not leave
to prove I could go.
I left because
there was more of me
waiting to be introduced

I did not spend three years
fighting my way to a new country
to stop at the border
of my own potential.

I did not cross an ocean
to become smaller
inside a bigger world.

I came carrying a dream,
and found another horizon
waiting to challenge it.

I have arrived
But I am only beginning.