It’s been so long, but I still yearn for the sound. That melodious tune used to drift into my ears and flood my body with adrenaline. Days have turned into weeks, weeks into years, but not a single hour passes without the memory returning. It was always the first thing I heard in the mornings, and it had become more than just music - it was a rhythm that stitched meaning into my existence.

But then came her last words, the ones that shattered everything: “No contact.”

She had said it so firmly, her lips pressed together as if sealing a covenant with silence. Then she turned, her Ankara skirt swaying like a wave goodbye, and she walked out of my life.

At first, I thought she would return. After all, Nigeria has a way of bringing people back together, even against their will. Lagos, especially, is a small world disguised as a sprawling city. One moment you’re sure someone has vanished, and the next you’re seeing them across the road at Ojuelegba, waving like time had never passed. But with her, the city’s magic didn’t work. She disappeared like mist into the Harmattan sky.

The sound I longed for wasn’t just her voice; it was her violin.

Yes, a violin in Nigeria, where the talking drum and shekere reign supreme. She was the only one I knew who played it. Every dawn, she would sit on the balcony of her father’s house in Surulere, close her eyes, and let her bow dance on the strings. At first, neighbors mocked her: “See this one o, she thinks she is oyinbo with this her violin.” But as days turned into months, even the cynics began to pause on their way to the bus stop just to listen. Conductors who usually shouted “Ojuelegba straight!” would linger longer than necessary. Traders slowed their steps, their baskets swaying on their heads, caught in her melody.

That was how I first noticed her - through sound.

I remember that morning on my way to UNILAG, I stopped in front of her gate, spellbound by the strings. She caught me staring, her eyes half-amused, half-annoyed.

“You wan thief violin?” she had asked, raising an eyebrow.

That was the beginning.

We grew close, not just because of the music but because she carried a mystery about her, a kind of stubbornness that resisted the chaos of our world. She often said Nigeria was too noisy, too harsh, too unkind to dreamers like her. She wanted Europe, stages with red curtains, and audiences that understood Bach and Vivaldi. I, on the other hand, wanted her.

But dreams are heavy things, and when they collide with love, someone has to bend. I wanted to follow her dream, but my roots ran too deep here. Leaving was not an option.

Also, her father, a strict man with tribal marks like war stripes, saw me as a distraction.

“This one no get future,” he told her once, thinking I couldn’t hear. “He go tie you down. Your music will die with him.”

It hurt, but I stayed. I believed love was enough. Until the morning, she told me, her violin case already strapped to her back, that she had won a scholarship to Vienna. She didn’t even give me space to beg, to plead, to promise. Just those two words, “No contact.”

Then she was gone.

For months, Lagos mocked me with her absence. Every Keke Napep radio seemed to play a string instrument, every church revival had a violinist I mistook for her. But the cruelest thing was silence, those dawns when no melody floated from the balcony, when the city returned to its raw, abrasive self.

Years later, I thought I had moved on. I worked, I built, I even tried to fall in love again. But last December, during the Christmas carol at Tafawa Balewa Square, I heard it - the same sound. My heart stopped. The bow strokes, the rising crescendo, the passion. I knew it instantly. She was here.

I pushed through the crowd, my chest tight with hope and fear. And there she was, in a flowing green dress, leading the orchestra. Older, more refined, but still her. My eyes burned as memories crashed over me. I wanted to run to her, to tell her how the silence had nearly killed me.

But when the performance ended, and the applause thundered, I saw him. A tall Austrian-looking man, his hand on her waist, his lips whispering into her ear. She laughed, resting her head on his shoulder, the same way she once rested on mine.

I froze.

That night, I walked the streets of Lagos with the sound of her violin in my ears. But now, the melody was no longer sweet. It was sharp, piercing, a reminder of what could have been.

Yet, as I stood at the Falomo Bridge, watching the city lights shimmer on the lagoon, a thought struck me: maybe the sound was never meant to belong to me alone. Maybe it belonged to the world, to Nigeria that once mocked her but now embraced her, to the children in the crowd who might dare to dream because of her.

I still yearn for the sound, yes. But maybe yearning is all I will ever have. And in this city where dreams and heartbreaks walk hand in hand, maybe that is enough.