Yesterday, I was in my favourite place in the whole wide world; my pitch black room. I was buried under thick warm blankets protecting myself from the cold winter night – indulging in the pages of my favorite book. Everything seemed perfect until I received a call from an unknown number. This call pissed me off mainly because I did not who the caller was or what they wanted, which triggered my anxiety. I hated the fact that this unknown person felt entitled to my time, so much so, that they expected me to leave this precious moment all for them.

If there’s one thing I appreciate about modern technology, it’s that when I receive a call, it no longer take’s up the whole screen while ringing, instead it only shows in the notifications panel. With this feature I can continue with whatever it is that I’m busy doing while ignoring the call – and that’s exactly what I did. It stopped ringing and for a moment I felt a sense of relief; until it started ringing again.

I figured that this person, whoever they may be, will not give up until I answered their call and heard them out. I decided to answer this time around, with my greeting laced in attitude, and the person didn’t say a thing. I started panicking, thinking that the caller might be one of my girls who might be caught up in a hostage situation and this call is meant to serve as a signal for me to call the police. I mean who would call in the middle of the night for no apparent reason and keep quite after that?

I kept quiet so that I could detect any strange sounds that may mean danger. To my surprise it was in a cheerful setting, people were making loud but pleasant sounds that I could not make out with the loud music in the background. The music was so loud that I could hear it clearly above any other sound in the call. The song that was playing was very familiar to me, so familiar that I was tempted to sing along with it out loud. But I could not because I was in the middle of a very strange and awkward call with a person who wasn’t intent on saying anything to me, so I sang along in my head instead. The song went on for a few more minutes or so, until it began to fade away and a different bass beat started blasting through the sound system and people started screaming ‘yebo’ and ‘ayee’. That’s when the mystery caller hung up.

After they hung up I came to the sudden realisation that the caller had nothing to say to me, but instead wanted me to hear the song that was playing in the background. From there on it became crystal clear to me as to who the caller was because of that song – A song that I loved – A song that he loved – Our song. Memories came crashing down on me of a day when we were chilling and talking about life in general and that exact same song played on TV and we simultaneously stood up to dance. He laughed at my moves because I was bad, still am for that matter, but when that song played I didn’t care and would let my body move freely. He was good and tried teaching me some of this moves, but it was all in vain since I was hopeless in that field. We’d laugh at my unfruitful attempts and he’d jokingly say I have two left feet.

Memories of how we used to sing the lyrics to our song over the phone to each other and text them to one another – not because they sounded catchy or anything, but because they came from deep inside and we truly meant them. It’s amazing how they reflected our relationship and our love for each other. It’s almost like the song writer dug out our hearts, listened to what they wanted to say to each other and then put it in words for us; or at least it was like that for me.

I cannot recall the exact moment I started crying, but before I knew it I had tears streaming down my cheeks – tears I had absolutely no control over. However I knew that those tears did not come from a place of anger, sorrow, or regret. But they were tears of joy. Joy because I’ll forever be grateful to the forces of the universe for allowing our paths to cross. Joy because he is an amazing person that I learnt plenty of things from. Joy because he gave me memories that I will cherish forever and continue to carry with me even though we are no longer together. Joy because that is how he truly made me feel; extremely blissful. And you better believe every time I hear our song, I immediately start dancing.

Now I am not really sure why he chose to call me after months of silence. I don’t know what he was hoping to achieve or how he was feeling the moment he made that call. The only thing that I am sure of is how this whole ordeal made me feel. I felt happy that even after all this time he still thought of me when our song played. That he couldn’t put it in words or didn’t want to put it in words, but our song had stirred emotions within him that ended up reminding him of me and of what we shared.

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Tell us: Do you have an ex partner who was close to your heart and that you’re no longer in contact with, but the thought of them makes you happy?