Lives Between Walls

I. MY PEN

My pen doesn’t write lines.
It opens doors into worlds.
When I lift it, space loosens its posture. Walls begin to listen. Floors remember footsteps. Architecture stops being shelter and becomes witness.

---

II. BETWEEN TOWERS

“Where are we tonight?” she asks.
“Anywhere you want, Saba.”
She laughs softly, glancing at the pen in my hand. “That’s rich, coming from the man who literally writes my desires in ink.”

The ground begins to tilt.
Suddenly we’re standing on a narrow bridge between two brutalist towers, raw concrete rising like cliffs, their windows glowing sporadically, as if the buildings themselves are blinking awake. The wind is sharp here. Honest. The city hums beneath us like a held breath.
Her silk ivory dress catches the city light, as it ripples in the wind, alive—softening the hardness around us.
“You look at me like you miss being noticed,” she says, teasing.
I don’t deny it.
The towers lean closer, conspiratorial.
She steps into my space, slow, deliberate. Her fingers trace my wrist, then my palm. It’s light, but my body reacts like dry ground receiving the first drops of rain.
“Well I notice you,” she whispers as she kisses me then—brief, warm, playful. Not hunger. Not demand. Just affirmation. The kind that says you still exist.
The bridge dissolves. The towers crumble.

---

III. ROMAN BATHS

Now we’re inside a sunken Roman bath, marble worn smooth by centuries of bodies that once believed pleasure and reverence were the same thing. Steam curls lazily around columns cracked with age. Water laps softly at the edges, patient, unbothered.
She laughs and kicks off her shoes.
“You like places like this,” she says quietly.
“I like how you are in places like this,” I reply.

She smiles—that Ethiopian smile, bright and ancient, mischief and wisdom sharing the same mouth.
Stone steps sink into water that has known men longer than language.

I wave the pen once more and Saba’s violet drape loosens, becoming something softer, fluid, clinging just enough to make her raise an eyebrow.

“Careful,” she says, amused. “You’re being naughty.”

“I’m being honest,” I reply.

She laughs and slips into the water first, the fabric darkening, turning richer. I follow, easing myself back until the marble meets my spine and the heat does what heat has always done—persuades.

She settles behind me, legs on either side, and I lean back against her without thinking. It feels natural, like a position the body remembers from another life. Her arms come around me easily, no drama in it, just familiarity.

“You write like someone who hasn’t been touched in a while,” she says.

“That obvious?”

“Pain leaves punctuation,” she replies.

Her hands find my shoulders and begin their work—massaging—not hurried, not tentative either. Confident. Knowing. The kind of touch that isn’t asking for anything back.

“I don’t think women understand men these days,” I say after a while. “Not really. Our needs. How little it sometimes takes to keep us sane.”

She hums thoughtfully, fingers pressing into a stubborn place near my neck.

“So what’s your proposal, writer?” she asks. “Two women per man? One for love, one for maintenance?”

I tilt my head, considering, cheek resting against her arm. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

She chuckles, warm against my back. “Careful what you wish for. If one woman is already that complicated, two would finish you off completely. You’d come crawling back to me in pieces.”

“I’d deserve it,” I admit.

She presses a thumb just below my shoulder blade and I let out a low sound before I can stop myself.

“There,” she says. “That’s the knot. You’ve been carrying this one like it’s a badge of honour.”

“It hurts,” I say.
“Good hurt or bad hurt?”
“Good. Please don’t stop.”

Her fingers move with slow authority now, easing, coaxing, unwinding something that’s been clenched far too long. The steam thickens, the stone warms, the bath seems to lean in, approving.

“I wish I could take you with me,” I say quietly.

She pauses, just long enough to be honest.

“The real world would bruise me,” she says. “It bruises everyone. I might forget who I am there. And then you’d miss me.”

I smile, eyes closed. “I already know how that feels.”

She rests her chin lightly on my shoulder, breath steady, grounding.

“Then let me do what you made me to do,” she says. “Hold you long enough to send you back whole.”

She keeps working the tension out of my shoulders like she has all the time in the world. The bath steams around us, marble sweating softly, the old stones pretending they haven’t heard worse confessions than mine.

She pauses, then tilts her head.

“Tell me something,” she says. “If things are as dry and lonely as you say… why haven’t you gone out and found yourself some bimbo in the real world to balance you out?”

I open one eye. “Wow. Straight for the jugular.”

She shrugs. “I’m just curious. What’s stopped you?”

I think about it longer than I want to admit. The water laps against my chest. The columns wait.

“I don’t know,” I say finally. “Fear, maybe. Divine judgment. Lightning bolts. That sort of thing.”

She bursts out laughing, the sound bouncing off stone.

“Right,” she says. “Because what you’re doing with me is so much better.”

I frown. “Isn’t it?”

She leans forward so her mouth is close to my ear, voice low, amused. “You’re doing the same thing. Just quietly. In your head. In your heart. Honestly, it might be worse—at least affairs have the decency to be obvious.”

I pull back slightly, startled. “Excuse me? Aren’t you supposed to be the good influence here? My voice of reason?”

She grins, unapologetic. “I am.”

Then she taps my temple with one wet finger.

“I’m also everything you are.”

I stare at the steam, processing. “So what you’re saying is… I’m a mess.”

She nods solemnly. “A very articulate one.”

I smirk despite myself. “I didn’t realise I was such a piece of work.”

“That’s because you keep editing yourself,” she says.

Then she shoves me.

Water splashes everywhere, breaking the seriousness like glass. I sputter, laughing, as she kicks water back at me, suddenly all mischief and movement.

“Oh, don’t look so shocked,” she says. “You started this.”

“I did not—”

She splashes me again.

The bath dissolves mid-laughter.

---

IV. INDUSTRIAL CATHEDRAL

The roar arrives before the place does.

The venue isn’t just a hall—it’s an industrial cathedral, steel trusses bolted together with intent, cables hanging like veins, speakers stacked in brutal symmetry. The ceiling disappears into darkness. Light rigs strobe violently, slicing the air into fragments. The crowd—hundreds of bodies—moves as one animal, heat and noise feeding back on itself.

I’m already on stage.

A guitar is strapped across me, heavy and alive, vibrating before I even touch it. The floor thrums through my boots. I strike a riff and the sound tears through the room, ricocheting off concrete and steel, climbing the trusses, coming back louder.

I look to my left.

Saba is standing at the microphone.

She is white with shock.

For half a second, she looks like she might bolt—eyes wide, breath caught, the audience leaning forward as if they can smell fear. I laugh, fingers flying, enjoying this far too much.

Then she sings.

And the room submits.

Her voice cuts clean through the distortion—strong, fearless, perfectly pitched. It rides the chaos instead of fighting it. The crowd roars approval, hands shooting up, bodies surging closer to the stage. The architecture funnels them inward, compressing the energy, forcing intimacy.

Saba finds her footing mid-verse. Shock turns to fire. She grips the mic, hair flying, voice opening fully now. The lights catch her just right—sweat, leather, breath—youthful and feral and utterly alive.

I can’t stop grinning as I play.

The final note crashes down. Silence—one perfect beat—then the place explodes. Applause slams into us in waves. Shouts. Whistles. Someone throws a rose. Then another. Red petals scatter across the stage like evidence.

I grab her hand.

“Come on.”

We’re running before she can ask where.

Backstage is a maze—narrow concrete corridors, exposed pipes, low ceilings pressing down. People slap our backs, shout praise, laugh, hands reaching out as we push through, adrenaline still screaming in our ears.

We duck into the first door we find.

It’s a broom closet.

Mops, cleaning fluid, a single flickering bulb. The door slams shut behind us and the noise of the crowd drops to a muffled pulse.

Saba stares at me, chest heaving.

“What the hell was that?” she demands.

I don’t answer.

I kiss her.

Hard. Immediate. All leftover electricity and nowhere else to put it. She gasps, then laughs against my mouth, grabbing my jacket, pulling me closer. We’re all edges and breath and heat, pressed into a space barely big enough for the feeling moving through us.

“For the record,” she says between kisses, “never do that again.”

I kiss her again.

The bulb flickers.

The walls feel too close. The moment peaks—sharp, bright, unsustainable.

And then—

The sound drains.

The light softens.

The broom closet dissolves.

But the pulse remains.

---

V. THE TRAIN STATION

Now we’re in a vast abandoned train station now—steel trusses soaring overhead like ribs, glass panels fractured but still holding. Moonlight spills through the gaps. The tracks stretch away into darkness, infinite possibility, no departures scheduled.

Saba stumbles half a step, laughing, still catching her breath. She turns to me and punches my chest—light, sharp, affectionate.

“What is wrong with you?” she says, breathless. “You just threw me into a crowd, a stage, and into a closet—do you have any idea what you made me do?”

I catch her hands before she can hit me again. They’re warm. Steady. Alive.

I look at her properly now—eyes bright, lips flushed, hair still carrying the chaos of the concert.

“Admit it,” I say, “you loved it.”

She scoffs, but she doesn’t pull away.

“Loved it?” she says. “I nearly died up there.”

She gives me a look that suggests I’ve just crossed a line—and enjoyed it.

The station settles around us, steel easing, dust drifting back into place. Somewhere far down the line, a single light flickers and goes out.

She shakes her head, smiling despite herself, “Next time warn me before you change the world that drastically.”

“No,” I say. “That ruins the surprise.”
I knew she loved unpredictability; I had made her that way. She knew I did it deliberately. She loved being pulled out of comfort, into something that made her feel unmistakably alive.

She’d changed again. High-waisted trousers. A cropped top. Bare shoulders. Youthful, electric. She spins, arms out, letting the space take her.
She looks around at the empty platform. “So what do we have now? A dark, abandoned train station? Is this where you take all your dates… or should I start planning my escape?”
I smile. “Relax. If I were kidnapping you, I’d have tried harder.”

She grins and bumps her hip into mine. “Please. If you were kidnapping me, I’d already be telling you what to do next.”
She takes my face in her hands, kisses me again—this time playful, almost laughing against my mouth.
Somewhere down the line, a train thunders past on a distant track—metal screaming against metal, a ghost refusing to stay buried. The whole station shudders. Dust lifts. The ribs above us creak like an old man stretching in his sleep.

She pauses, listening.

Then her expression changes.

She watches the tracks for a moment, eyes following nothing.

“You know,” she says quietly, “earlier you asked if you could take me with you.”

I don’t answer.

She turns back to me, softer now. “I don’t exist to compete with your life. I exist so you don’t forget how it feels to be fully awake inside it.”

The station settles around us, steel easing, glass sighing as a night train passes somewhere beyond sight.

“You don’t need me to replace anyone,” she adds. “You just need proof that you haven’t gone numb.”

A low hum moves through the building, like rails remembering weight.

“And you?” I ask. “What do you get out of this, arrangement?”
She looks back at me then, eyes shining but steady.

“I get to hold what you don’t know where else to put.”

The words land slowly, like snow.

Somewhere far off, a train moves through the dark—low, distant, mournful. The sound passes through the station like a memory.

“That’s what I get,” she finishes. “To be the place you were allowed to rest, even if only for a while. In that, my purpose is fulfilled.”

I lower my eyes to the pen in my hand.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “That I made you from need.”

She smiles sadly. “That’s the only reason anyone is ever made.”

I lift the pen.

She nods once, already letting go.

“Go,” she says. “You don’t need to stay to prove this mattered.”

And the station—vast, patient, unfinished—holds the silence for both of us.

“And I’ll stay here, waiting for you,” she says. “Between paragraphs. Between breaths.”
I nod.

When I close the notebook, the cities settle back into themselves. The towers straighten. The baths cool. The station waits.
She remains—where she belongs.

I emerge back into my world—whole.