My Old Yerwa Love.

Perhaps i experienced my one true love.

We started talking on the 10th of June, 2022, just five days after your birthday. A birthday I didn’t celebrate with you, but quietly wish I had. At the time, you were still a stranger wrapped in a curious digital presence. I didn’t know the cadence of your laughter or the weight of your silences. I didn’t know the way you’d eventually make space in my day, unannounced but welcome.

But even then, even in that early fog of almost-knowing, I felt something. Had I known you better, I would’ve sent a voice note with that half-serious, half-sarcastic tone of mine. Or written a prayer into the space between us, the kind I whisper in my heart when someone starts meaning more to me than I expected. You made it easy to care. Too easy. Like slipping into warm water without realizing you’re slowly getting submerged.

It started with a DM. Just one word: “Congratulations.”

I stared at it, both amused and slightly confused. I didn’t laugh, not really, but something in me smiled, a quiet, curling kind of laugh that stayed in my chest. The kind that whispers, who is this, and why do I suddenly want to reply?

I had just posted a photo from a friend’s wedding, someone else’s joy, someone else’s moment. And there you were, responding like i was the one getting married. Bold. Random. Completely misplaced. And yet somehow perfectly you. A message that didn’t make any logical sense, but cracked open a door.

One you built from nothing but nerve and timing. And somehow… it worked.

God, it worked.

From the beginning, our conversations carried this strange, weightless rhythm. We didn’t stumble or over-explain. We flowed. Words passed between us like they’d been rehearsed in another life. There was an unspoken familiarity, a quiet understanding tucked into every sentence. It felt like we’d known each other long before this timeline, before adulthood hardened us, before life demanded we protect ourselves from feeling too much. We spoke in a shared dialect of sarcasm and softness. Our humor, dry, oddly timed, sometimes entirely inappropriate, felt like home.

You were a man rooted in the warmth of your home and the traditions that molded you, but with a sharp edge of independence that was undeniably you. You were both reserved and assertive. As a man from Borno, you carried the weight of your heritage with pride, but there was a softness too, a tenderness that broke through in moments when you didn’t even realize it. In the way you valued family, I saw the depth of who you were. A man who might carry the weight of the world on his shoulders, but never too far from the roots that grounded him.

There was no awkward beginning. No fumbling. Just an ease. A quiet knowing. You made space feel safe without even trying. And i who has always been cautious with softness, didn’t even notice when instarted to unfold.

And then we started talking. Properly.

Not the surface kind, not the how-was-your-day kind, but the kind that tugs at something beneath your ribs. It was like returning home to a house I’d never lived in but somehow belonged to. Every word we exchanged felt like furniture I remembered from a dream. The creak of the floorboards, the shape of the light, it all made sense in you.

I knew I was getting attached when i started feeling that quiet ache, the kind that made me pause whenever my phone lit up, hoping it was you. When I found myself scrolling through our chats just to feel close again. Not because you said anything profound. Not because you asked for anything. But because you were becoming this soft, steady hum in my day. A silent guest in my thoughts, always lingering.

It was terrifying, how easily you slipped under my skin. How your presence started to feel like a home I didn’t know i was missing. You were becoming my quiet addiction, the kind that didn’t scream, but whispered. The kind that pulled me gently, but with a force i did not want to fight.

We’ve always existed in this gray area, floating between what we feel and what we say. On and off. Not because we didn’t want it, but because we wanted it too much. And when you’ve lived most of your life protecting your softness, desire feels dangerous. Commitment feels like standing naked in a storm. So we danced around it, clumsy and cautious, cowards in love, pretending we weren’t. But our actions? They told everything.

There’s a strange thing about love when you’ve been conditioned to guard your heart like it’s the most fragile thing in the world. You grow up learning how to protect it, how to never show too much, never give too much, never want too much. And then comes you. The very thing I’ve been taught to guard against, and yet somehow, I wanted to give it all to you.

I thought at first, maybe I was the one afraid of commitment, but then I realized: it was you. You, too, were terrified. You kept pulling away, keeping things at arm’s length. You’d get close, let your walls down just a little, only to build them back up the next moment. You wanted it, I could feel it. But you were too afraid to let go. Afraid to be as vulnerable as I had already allowed myself to be.

It’s funny, isn’t it? Wanting something so badly, yet being terrified of the weight it carries. Love feels too heavy when you’ve been carrying around the remnants of past fears and disappointments, things that still echo when you dare to let someone close.

And here I was, trying to love you despite it. But every time I thought we were getting closer, every time I let myself believe we were inching toward something real, it pulled back again. And I? I was left trying to understand why we couldn’t get this right, why we couldn’t take the leap we both needed. We both knew the gray area wasn’t where either of us wanted to stay. But sometimes, wanting is never enough, especially when we’re both holding onto fear.

So here we are.

Stuck in the in-between, in a place where wanting each other is never enough.

I remember the day you told me how you felt about me, how hard you tried to find the right words, like someone fumbling in the dark for a light switch. You were never fluent in the language of feelings. A Borno man through and through. So when you sat across from me, shoulders stiff with the weight of unspoken things, I saw how much it cost you just to try.

And your eyes. The way they dart when you’re shy. Like if you look too long, you’ll give away more than you want to. It’s endearing. You turned your head away, eyes shifting to the floor, as if looking directly at me would make the truth too real. But i heard it anyway. I saw it in the way your voice faltered. And in that moment, you didn’t have to be articulate. You were honest. And that was enough.

That kind of love, quiet but burning, made me want to be soft with you. To peel back my layers and offer you the real me, the girl who wants to be loved gently, even when she pretends not to need it. I wanted to trust you with my softness, my longing, my vulnerability. And with you, it felt different. Like maybe, just maybe, you could see me in all my fragility and still choose me.

I remember how you said my name.

“Sam Sam.”

Only you could make it sound like that. It became a keepsake. A secret. A quiet promise. I never wanted to hear it from anyone else. It was no longer just a name; it was a thread that tied us together.

But now, here we are, strangers. Strangers to the very thing that once felt so familiar, so right. We had something once, a quiet kind of magic, a bond that didn’t need words. But somewhere between my hesitation and your fear, we let it slip away. Not in one moment, but a thousand small ones. Choosing silence when we should’ve spoken. Holding back when we should’ve leaned in.

We share the number 5. And maybe that’s trivial to some people, but for me, numbers hold energy. Patterns. Meaning. And five has always meant something to me. Like the universe had just whispered, pay attention.

There’s still so much I don’t know about us. About what we are. What we’ll be. But I know this: You comfort me in ways i didn’t even know I needed comforting.

You see me in all my loud silences and quiet chaos. And if that’s not intimacy, I don’t know what is.

So here i am, not writing a love letter. Because that would mean admitting more than I’m ready to. But also, not not writing one.

I’m just telling the truth the only way i know how, raw, unfiltered, and imperfect. I don’t have all the answers. But I have this: the quiet certainty that something between us was real. Something that, in its own way, mattered.

So here it is.

These words.

This heart.

Maybe not a love letter. But maybe… something like it.