Letters to Ayo: A Spiritual Memoir of Love, Loss & Letting Go
Chapter 7: The Message
Michelle's days in Nairobi had taken on a new rhythm, like a song she was learning to hum without thinking. Morning walks to the flower market became sacred ritual, her bare feet in simple sandals navigating the uneven cobblestones, her senses awakening to the riot of colors and fragrances that greeted the dawn. Vendors called out their greetings in Swahili, and she responded with her slowly improving pronunciation, earning smiles that warmed her more than coffee ever could.
Midday writing sessions in quiet cafés had become her sanctuary. She favored a little place called Mama Njeri's, where the owner served tea in mismatched china cups and the wifi was temperamental enough to force her into deeper contemplation. The scratching of her pen on paper had replaced the anxious checking of her phone, and words poured out of her like water from a broken dam—months of spiritual insights, emotional revelations, and hard-won wisdom finally finding their way onto the page.
Evening meditation under the stars completed each day with celestial punctuation. The Nairobi sky, unpolluted by the light that drowned out stars in American cities, spread above her like a jeweled tapestry. She would sit on her small balcony wrapped in a kitenge cloth she'd bought from a street artist, feeling the vast expanse of African sky hold her in its cosmic embrace.
There was finally space to breathe, to feel herself again outside of the entanglement that had defined so many of her recent months. The constant spiritual downloads, the emotional ping-ponging between hope and disappointment, the exhausting work of loving someone who couldn't quite love her back, all of it had settled into memory like sediment in a clear lake.
Kofi's steady presence remained gentle, a hum in the background of her healing like the sound of distant drums. He didn't push for more than she could give, didn't demand explanations for the faraway look that sometimes crossed her face when she thought he wasn't watching. His patience felt like a gift she was still learning to unwrap.
But life, and spirit, rarely move in straight lines. They spiral and curve, bringing us back to places we thought we'd left behind, offering us chances to see how far we've traveled even when the landscape looks familiar.
It was a Saturday morning when the message came, arriving like an unexpected visitor at the door. The air was soft with the promise of rain, and Michelle was in her small kitchen preparing her daily cacao tea, a ritual she'd adopted from a shaman she'd met in her travels. The rich, earthy scent of raw cacao mixed with cinnamon and honey filled the space as she stirred the mixture with a wooden spoon worn smooth by countless morning ceremonies.
Her phone buzzed against the marble counter, and she glanced at the screen without much interest. Messages came throughout the day from friends, family, her daughter checking in from college. But when she saw the name, her hand stilled on the spoon.
Ayo.
She stared at his name for a long time before opening it, her heart doing something that wasn't quite racing but wasn't quite calm either. Months had passed since their last real conversation, weeks since she'd even thought about him with anything more than passing curiosity. Yet here was his name on her screen, carrying with it the weight of everything unfinished between them.
"Michelle, I need to say some things," his message began. "If you don't want to read this, I understand. But I can't keep holding this in."
She set down her spoon and moved to the small sofa by the window, tucking her legs beneath her as she prepared to receive whatever was coming. The morning light painted everything in soft gold, and she could hear the vendor across the street calling out the day's offerings in a voice that had become as familiar as her own heartbeat.
Ayo's message unfolded like a confession wrapped in longing, each sentence carrying the weight of months of things unsaid. He wrote of sleepless nights when 3 AM felt like a church where his thoughts went to worship at the altar of regret. Of hearing her voice in his head when he was overwhelmed by the demands of his career, the expectations of his fans, the pressure of maintaining an image that sometimes felt like wearing a mask made of glass.
"I hear you laughing at something I said months ago," he wrote, "and I remember what it felt like to make someone happy without having to perform for it."
He wrote about how he had mishandled the depth of their connection because he had never experienced anything like it before, not the spiritual intensity, not the way she seemed to see straight through to parts of himself he'd forgotten existed. He confessed to being afraid of what it meant to be loved by someone who could read his soul like an open book.
"I didn't know how to let you in because I didn't know how to let anyone in," the message continued. "I've been performing love for so long that I forgot what it felt like to actually feel it. And when I felt it with you, it scared me more than any stage, any crowd, any spotlight ever has."
He wrote about fear, of love, of vulnerability, of being seen not as the carefully curated public figure but as the man who sometimes woke up in the middle of the night wondering if he'd lost himself somewhere in the pursuit of everyone else's dreams for him.
"I've lied to myself more than I lied to you," he concluded. "I told myself I was protecting you by keeping you at arm's length, but I was really protecting myself. And I think you deserve to hear that."
Michelle read the message three times, her thumb scrolling slowly through the words that felt like they were written in his own blood. It didn't bring tears, she had cried all the tears this situation was going to extract from her months ago. Instead, there was a still quiet in her chest, like the moment after a storm when the air is finally clear.
There was truth there, she could feel it in the way her body responded, the way her nervous system recognized authenticity after months of half-truths and careful omissions. But there was also timing, and timing was everything in the delicate dance of human hearts.
She took a deep breath and moved to her meditation corner, where her dowsing rods waited in their silk-lined box like faithful counselors. The familiar weight of the copper instruments in her palms felt like coming home to herself.
"Is Ayo sincere in this message?" she asked the silence, her voice barely above a whisper.
The rods crossed with immediate certainty. Yes.
"Is he ready for the kind of relationship I want?" The question that mattered most, the one that would determine whether this was a new chapter or simply a beautiful ending.
The rods swung apart with equal conviction. No.
"Is this part of his healing journey?"
Yes.
"Is mine still unfolding?"
Yes.
She sat with those answers for a long time, feeling their truth settle into her bones like medicine. Understanding dawned with the gentleness of sunrise, this message wasn't about reconciliation. It was about completion. About him taking responsibility, about her receiving his truth without needing to carry it or fix it or transform it into something it wasn't.
Later that evening, after she had walked through the city markets and sat by the river watching children play football in the fading light, after she had made dinner and called her daughter and written three pages in her journal, she crafted her reply.
Her fingers moved across the phone's keyboard with the deliberate care of someone choosing words that would close a door with love rather than slam it with anger.
"Thank you for sharing this with me, Ayo," she typed. "I receive it with an open heart. I've learned that love doesn't always mean a shared path, but it always leaves a mark. Some marks are scars, but others are tattoos. permanent reminders of something beautiful that changed us. I wish you healing and peace."
She sent no emoji. No closing nickname. No invitation for further conversation. Just the truth, clean and complete as a prayer.
Within minutes, she saw the small notification that he had read her message. No response came, and she realized she didn't need one. Some conversations are meant to end in silence, in the space where understanding lives beyond words.
Some messages come not to restart a story but to bring it to its true end. Closure isn't always a conversation—it's a recognition that some chapters are meant to be read once, loved for what they were, and gently closed so that new stories have room to begin.
Next Chapter: Kofi invites Michelle to a healing retreat in Ghana, promising her ancestors are calling her home to African soil. She agrees to go, but an unexpected encounter during the trip reveals a new layer of her destiny that will challenge everything she thought she knew about her spiritual purpose.
To be continued...