THE MEETING

The Meeting

I had known Kofi growing up, back when time felt endless and emotions arrived before we had names for them. We lived in the same neighborhood, walked the same dusty paths, shared the same laughter that rose easily and disappeared just as fast. He was never deliberately charming; that was part of the problem. He was simply there—steady, familiar, quietly confident in a way that made him stand out without trying. Somewhere along the line, I developed a serious crush on him. I carried it carefully, like a secret letter never sent, convinced it was invisible to everyone else. I never knew he knew.

I remember one afternoon in particular. We were twelve, sitting beneath the mango tree near the schoolyard. He was carving shapes into the dirt with a stick, and I was pretending to read a book I wasn’t really interested in. He looked up suddenly, squinting against the sun, and asked, “Do you think we’ll always live here?” I laughed, unsure how to answer, and shrugged. But the question stayed with me. Even then, he seemed to see beyond the moment, as if the future was already whispering to him. I wanted to tell him that I hoped so, that I wanted him always nearby. Instead, I said nothing. Silence became my way of keeping him close without risking the truth.

Those years passed the way years always do—without asking permission. School ended. Paths diverged. Responsibilities replaced dreams. We all grew up. We all married. Life filled itself with schedules, commitments, children, careers, and the kind of tiredness that comes not from lack of sleep but from constancy. The past, including Kofi, settled into memory, filed away under then, harmless and complete.

I wasn’t looking for him. Not in the streets, not online, not even in thought. Life was full enough. My days were structured, predictable, responsible. Writing, which once came to me easily, had quietly slipped away. Words felt unnecessary, indulgent even. There were meals to prepare, meetings to attend, problems to solve. Creativity became something I admired from a distance, like a childhood home you no longer visit.

Then one day, out of the blue, we met.

It happened in the most ordinary way—no grand coincidence, no dramatic setup. A mutual obligation. A shared space. A moment where I looked up, expecting a stranger, and instead found a familiar face altered by time but unmistakably his. For a second, my mind refused to cooperate. I knew that face, yet I didn’t. The boy I remembered had been replaced by a man, but the eyes—those were the same. Calm. Observant. As if he had always been paying attention.

“Kofi?” I said, my voice uncertain, testing the name against the present.

He smiled, slow and deliberate. “It’s been a long time.”

We exchanged greetings, polite at first, measured. Names spoken aloud felt strange, like calling out to someone across years instead of across a room. We smiled, the kind of smiles people wear when they are deciding how much of the past is allowed to sit with the present. Conversation followed, careful and courteous. We spoke of work, of family, of life in general. We avoided the past, as though it were fragile glass that might cut us if handled carelessly.

Yet beneath the surface of that ordinary exchange, something stirred.

It wasn’t desire. It wasn’t regret. It wasn’t even nostalgia, though nostalgia hovered nearby. It was recognition. The sudden awareness that someone before me had known me before—before titles, before expectations, before the careful self-editing adulthood demands. Standing there, I felt briefly visible in a way I hadn’t in years.

We did not talk long. We didn’t need to. There was no dramatic confession, no revelation of hidden feelings. But when our conversation ended and we went our separate ways, I knew—without understanding how—that something had shifted.

That meeting changed everything.

That evening, I found myself restless. The day replayed itself in fragments: his laugh, softer now; the pause before he answered certain questions; the way he listened, really listened, as if words still mattered. I realized I had missed that—not him exactly, but that version of myself who once believed words could hold meaning beyond function.

That night, I picked up a pen.

At first, it was awkward. The page felt too white, too expectant. I wrote a sentence and crossed it out. Wrote another. Stopped. But something had opened, and it refused to close. Memories surfaced—not just of Kofi, but of childhood, of becoming, of all the small moments I had lived without recording. I wasn’t writing about him. I was writing because of the space the meeting had reopened.

In the days that followed, words returned slowly, then insistently. I wrote in the early mornings before the house woke. I wrote late at night when the world finally quieted. I wrote fragments, scenes, reflections. Some were clumsy. Some surprised me with their clarity. Writing no longer felt like a luxury; it felt like a necessity, like breathing after holding my breath for too long.

I thought often about that meeting—not with longing, but with gratitude. It had reminded me that life is layered, that the past doesn’t disappear simply because we stop looking at it. Sometimes it waits patiently, not to reclaim us, but to return something we didn’t know we had lost.

We did not meet again for a long time. And when we did, it was different—lighter, settled. The mystery had already done its work. He remained part of my story, but not in the way people might assume. He was not the beginning of something romantic. He was the beginning of something creative.

That meeting gave me permission to remember myself.

It taught me that some encounters are not meant to change our direction outwardly, but inwardly. They don’t demand action. They demand attention. They ask us to listen to the quiet parts of ourselves we have ignored.

And so I write.

Not because of what might have been, but because of what was awakened. Because one ordinary meeting reminded me that words still live inside me, waiting. Because sometimes, the most profound changes begin without explanation—softly, unexpectedly, and in silence.