Lives Between Walls

For a while, I don’t write.

Not because I’ve decided not to — but because life keeps stepping in front of the page. Work stretches longer. The house is always noisy with small needs: shoes to find, bags to pack, dishes to wash. I become useful. Reliable. The kind of man my wife can depend on.

And somewhere in all of that, something goes quiet.

Saba doesn’t come anymore.
I know now she only appears when I’m creating, when I’m letting something open inside me. Months pass without a single page. The journal stays on the desk where I left it, patient, almost watching.

I tell myself this is what being present looks like.

Then one night, we fight.

It starts small — something ordinary, something that shouldn’t matter. But it never stays small.

“You don’t get to be upset,” she says. “Not after what you did.”

“I’ve paid for that,” I say quietly. “It was three years ago.”

“An affair doesn’t expire.”

The room feels suddenly smaller.

“It’s not fair that you keep bringing it back,” I say. “You can’t keep punishing me forever.”

She doesn’t look at me. “Then try harder.”

“I am trying,” I say. “But I can’t be the only one reaching. I can’t keep talking to someone who’s not here.”

She shrugs. “Maybe that’s what you deserve.”

And something slips out of me.

“Saba would never—”

Silence.

Her head lifts slowly. “Who?”

I freeze.

“Saba,” she says. “Who is Saba?”

I swallow. “She’s… a character. In one of my stories.”

She laughs, sharp.

“That’s not—”

“Every time,” she cuts in. “I’m never enough. There’s always someone else in your head.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Nothing about this is fair.”

“I can’t live like this,” I say, shaking now. “If you can’t forgive me, if you won’t even try, then maybe you should just leave. What you’re doing to me right now — this distance — it’s worse than the affair ever was.”

She studies me, cool and unreadable.

“You need to try harder.”

And I realise something then — something that lands heavier than anger:

She isn’t fighting anymore.

She’s already somewhere else, and I’m standing alone in the middle of a life that still looks intact from the outside.

Somewhere beyond the noise of the house, beyond the weight of obligation, Saba has been quiet for a long time.

And so have I.

---

That afternoon, something in me breaks open again.

It isn’t dramatic. It’s just heat and quiet and too much held inside for too long. My wife has taken our daughter out to see friends, and the house feels hollow without their footsteps. The loneliness has room to breathe now. So does the ache.

I glance at the journal on the desk. It’s been sitting there for months, untouched, like it’s been waiting. Almost calling.

I switch on the desk lamp. The light pools across the paper, warm and deliberate. I sit down, rub my face with both palms, trying to steady myself.

All that money. All those sessions. All the careful talking and measured listening, and still here I am—tired, emptied out, bent around a marriage that keeps asking me to give more than I have left.

I’ve spent so much of myself trying to keep something upright that has been quietly collapsing anyway.

I breathe out slowly.

I deserved to be filled too.
I deserved to be seen.
I deserved encouragement, and warmth, and someone who looked at me like I mattered.

I open the journal. The pen feels heavier than I remember.

I’m not going to have an affair again. I know where that road leads. But Saba… Saba doesn’t live in this world. Therefore the rules here didn’t quite reach her.

Still, a flicker of unease passes through me.
If I go back, I don’t know what I might find.

And yet—I miss her.

I close the journal again and step out onto the balcony for air. The chair is still there, angled toward the city. The sight of it sends a quiet rush through me—memories of laughter between worlds, of being held, of being wanted.

I run my hand along the wood of the chair, slow and careful, as if it might remember her.

I had tried to let her go.
I had tried to choose the life I was supposed to want.

But I keep finding her in the quiet places of the house—
in the pauses,
in the shadows,
in the spaces where no one else is listening.

I tried to let her go.

That was the lesson, wasn’t it? The spider. The forest. The boy in the cupboard. All of it had been pointing to the same truth: I am not alone. I don’t need to be filled by someone else just to survive my own silence. I don’t need to create a person to fill the gap.

I didn’t need Saba anymore.

But wanting is not the same thing as needing.

And I wanted her.

Not to rescue me.
Not to complete me.
But because somewhere between worlds, she had looked at me and seen something worth staying for.

I look back at the journal on the desk. The pen resting against it, quiet and patient. A door I’ve learned how to close, but not how to forget.

Maybe that’s the real danger—not that I still ache, but that I still choose.

And I’m not sure yet which choice is the braver one.

---

Later, I go out.

Not to escape—just to breathe. To feel the world brush up against me again.

I dress carefully. Not extravagantly. Just well. Clean lines, a shirt that sits right on my shoulders, shoes that say I still know who I am. I catch my reflection before I leave and don’t look away. It matters—to remember that I am still visible. Still wanted.

I head to the mall to buy supplies for one of the few things I’ve kept doing lately: sketching. Not writing—sketching. Paper, pencils, charcoal. Quiet tools. Things that let me think without bleeding.

The mall hums like a living thing. Footsteps, voices, music leaking from shops, coffee and perfume and heat in the air. People move in loose currents. Teenagers laughing too loudly. Couples brushing past each other. Life in motion.

I feel good walking through it. Light. Almost handsome. I catch a few glances—girls my age, younger women, even a few walking beside their boyfriends. Especially those. It’s not cruelty. It’s reassurance. A small, selfish confirmation that I still exist in the world of desire.

In the art store, I’m talking to the attendant about paper weight when I see her.

Across the foyer.

Everything slows.

Her.

The way she moves. The way her hair catches the light. The gentle sway of her hips. The soft curve of her waist. My body recognises her before my mind does.

Saba.

The attendant’s voice becomes a blur. The mall fades into white noise. She looks straight at me—and for a heartbeat, we are the only two people in that enormous building.

She smiles.

Just a little.

Then she turns and disappears past the frame of those glass doors.

I’m already moving.

“Saba—” I call, pushing through the crowd, my pulse in my ears. I burst out into the corridor beyond the shop, scanning, spotting her ahead. Running now, breath sharp, heart hammering like the worlds themselves are colliding.

“Saba!” I reach out. “Hey—wait!”

She turns.

And her eyes are empty of recognition.

Just a woman. Startled. Polite.

“I’m sorry?” she says.

Heat rushes to my face. “I—I’m sorry. You just look like someone I know.”

She laughs softly, embarrassed for me, for both of us. “I think you’ve got the wrong person.”

A man steps up beside her, slips an arm around her shoulders, kisses her cheek. He looks at me carefully, protective.

I nod quickly. “Sorry. My mistake.”

They walk away.

I stand there, shaken.

And then she glances back.

Just for a second.

That same small smile.

And I know.

It was her.

And somehow—impossibly—I have to let her go.