On that Tuesday morning, which had already starter being a strange day for her, because nothing had ever happened to her on any Tuesday in her life, but that day she found a letter.
She was just walking back home from market, in the usual busy street of Lagos, a bag of tomatoes in one hand and her iPhone in the other one, that was when she nearly walked into the back of a truck that was packed, it was a purple truck, aggressively and unapologetically purple, just in a way that made her wonder about the specific series of decisions that has led to them choosing that kind of colour for the truck of that size.
So she stepped around it and that was when she saw the letter just on the ground beside it, in a white envelope, there no stamp, no address, there was just a name written in a handwriting that looked like it had been written in a hurry.
Emeka...
After picking it up, Teni looked around her, the street was busy , in a way that Lagos streets always were, full of people going somewhere like the were in a hurry, nobody was paying attention to a girl who was holding a letter next to a purple truck
She knew an Emeka , of course Everyone in Lagos knew an Emeka or so, But she, the only one she knew who mattered and she had not spoken to him in two years and it was not since the argument that had ended things between them so cleanly that she had almost convinced herself that she was fine with it.
She turned the envelope over in her hands.
The handwriting on the front was familiar in a way that made her stomach do something she was not prepared for on a Tuesday afternoon with tomatoes in her hand.
This was her own handwriting.
This is a letter that she had written. She recalled now, two years ago, the night prior to her decision to move on, she had written everything that her mother told her when feelings got too heavy for her to bear, she had written it, and then she hadn't sent it, and she had thought that she had thrown it away.
She was standing there on that street in Lagos with that purple truck by her side and read each of those words standing there next to the truck, and the words were the most honest she had ever written, people walked by her, A horn was blown by someone's okada, The sun "did what the sun does in Lagos".
By the time she finished reading she was not the same person who had picked it up.
She looked up Emeka's number on her cell phone, it was still saved, She had said to herself that she was keeping it for no good reason, she realized that that was not the case anymore.
She called him.
He picked up on the third ring.He answered her call on the third ring and said her name as though he knew she would be calling, not surprised, not confused, Just ready, It was like some part of him always knew this call was coming and just waiting for her to catch up with him.
"Emeka." she said.
"Teni" he said back
For one instant, that's all, two names swapped as if passing on a borrowed object.
Finally, she said, "I found something today.
What did you find?
She took a look at the envelope in her hand, looking into her own hand writing, after two years of folding, the white piece of paper became one.
It's something I should have given you long ago," she said.
He was quiet, Then he said "Where you are.
She raised her eyes to the purple truck which still remained in the same place she had spotted it, Unmoved, Patient, As always, this was part of this story.
She said, "Come and find me.
Image Is Generate With Chatgpt.
