Letters to Ayo: A Spiritual Memoir of Love, Loss & Letting Go
Chapter 1: The Arrival of Ayo
Michelle never expected love to show up wrapped in mystery and rhythm. It was an ordinary Thursday night when Ayo first reached out, a DM, innocent in tone but laced with curiosity. She was curled in her favorite armchair, the one draped with her grandmother's kente cloth, sipping on hibiscus tea that steamed ruby-red in the lamplight. Her laptop balanced precariously on her knees, cursor blinking at the end of her work report, when the notification chimed. The sound cut through her thoughts about tomorrow's endless meetings and the quarterly presentation that haunted her dreams.
The message appeared like a whisper in the digital ether: "Your energy radiates even through your photos. There's something about your spirit that feels... familiar."
Michelle's fingers paused over the keyboard. The words carried weight, as if they'd traveled across more than just fiber optic cables. With it came an energetic ripple that would reshape her heart, her spirit, and the meaning of divine connection.
Ayo was charming, smooth like a melody that stuck in your spirit long after the song ended, the kind that made you hum unconsciously while washing dishes or walking through the market. His voice, when the first audio message came three days later, was honey over gravel, confident yet tender.
"Michelle," he said, and the way he pronounced her name—Mee-shell—with that slight accent she couldn't place, made her pulse flutter. "I hope you don't mind me reaching out like this. There's something about your posts about spirituality and healing that speaks to my soul."
He claimed to be a philanthropist, retired athlete, now involved in music finance, based somewhere along the Pacific rim, always traveling, always between time zones. Michelle lived in her quiet corner of Nairobi, surrounded by acacia trees and red earth, tradition woven into ceremony, and dreams that danced beyond the stars like fireflies at dusk. Their worlds couldn't have been more different. But sometimes, destiny doesn't care about maps.
Their conversations started simple, music, books, spirituality. He sent her a voice note while walking through what sounded like a bustling airport: "I just heard this song that reminded me of something you said about healing frequencies. Listen..." And suddenly her phone filled with the sound of a street musician playing kalimba, the metal tines singing like rain on metal roofing.
She responded with her own voice note, sitting on her veranda as the sun painted the sky orange: "You know what's beautiful about that sound? It's what my grandmother called 'soul music', the kind that doesn't need words because it speaks directly to the heart."
"Exactly," came his reply hours later, his voice soft with what sounded like genuine wonder. "See? This is why I knew I had to talk to you."
They exchanged affirmations and prayers, voice notes that became longer and warmer by the day. By week three, Michelle could tell you the way Ayo laughed mid-sentence, a low rumble that started in his chest, and the hush in his voice when he said goodnight, like he was afraid to wake sleeping spirits.
"Sweet dreams, beautiful soul," he would whisper into her phone. "May your ancestors guard your rest."
She didn't need to see his face to feel him. The connection felt cosmic, as if she already knew him in a place before time, where souls recognized each other without the barrier of flesh.
Michelle, always skeptical of digital romances, found herself glowing. Not infatuated. Something deeper. Ayo asked the right questions: "How did you learn to trust your intuition so completely?" and "What does your heart need to feel truly held?" He cared about her well-being, checking in when she mentioned difficult days at work. He seemed to hold space for her thoughts without judgment, responding to her rambling voice notes about ancestral healing with genuine curiosity.
"Tell me more about the dowsing rods," he said one evening. "I've never met anyone who actually uses them. It sounds like you have a direct line to something most of us can only guess at."
She felt seen—truly seen.
But she wasn't naïve. She pulled out her dowsing rods one late night, the brass pendulums catching moonlight through her bedroom window, and asked her ancestors the questions that would either soothe her heart or shatter her peace:
"Is this man sent by divine order?" The rods swung decisively. Yes.
"Is this a karmic relationship?" They stilled, then moved opposite. No.
"Is he my soulmate?" Again, a clear negative.
"Is he a divine partner?" The swing was so strong it nearly pulled from her fingers. Yes.
It felt right. Still, Michelle had questions. She was in her mid-50s, gracefully weathered by past betrayals and spiritual awakenings, her brown skin lined with laugh lines and stories, her hair transitioning to silver in defiant, beautiful streaks. Ayo, she learned through careful questions, was nearly a decade younger, grounded in wisdom, yet still chasing dreams with the hunger of someone who hadn't learned that some ambitions were mirages.
As they peeled back layers of one another like pages in a sacred text, Michelle shared her past, the abuse that taught her to recognize red flags, the resilience that bloomed from nearly breaking, the children she raised into kind humans who now called to check on her heart.
"I learned," she told him in a voice note recorded while watching sunrise, "that survival isn't enough. We're meant to thrive, to love with our full chest even after it's been shattered."
Ayo spoke of a fractured marriage, a betrayal by his best friend who slept with his wife in their own bed, and the long silence from one of his daughters who blamed him for the divorce.
"Sometimes I wonder if I'm cursed to lose everyone I love," he said, his voice thick with unshed tears. "But then you send me these messages about healing and forgiveness, and I think... maybe there's still hope for me."
He didn't speak like a broken man. He spoke like someone who survived the crash and now stared at the wreckage, unsure if he should rebuild or walk away from the debris entirely.
Michelle didn't want to fix him. She just wanted to walk beside him, if the road led to healing.
One night, after a late video call where they talked about everything and nothing until her eyes grew heavy, Michelle stepped onto her balcony and whispered to the night sky, "What are you teaching me through him?" The stars stayed silent, but her chest warmed with a quiet knowing, as if her grandmother's spirit was smiling somewhere in the cosmic distance.
The next morning, Ayo sent her a message that made her heart skip: "I dreamt we were dancing in the stars. You wore white, flowing like wind. The music was something I'd never heard before, but somehow knew. I didn't want to wake up."
She smiled, her reflection catching in the bathroom mirror as she read his words.
But that same day, Michelle's dowsing rods would reveal something unsettling, something that would crack the foundation of everything she thought she knew about divine timing and cosmic connections.
To be continued...
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