Insight of a Kenyan Girl

Night carried a different weight in Patty’s world.

By the time the lamps were lit, the air in the apartment felt denser, like the walls themselves had absorbed too many secrets and now pulsed with them. I sat on the sofa, knees drawn up, wrapped in the comfort of his sweater an oversized thing he hadn’t handed me, just left draped across the chair, as though he knew I’d reach for it eventually.

He was on the phone again. Another language, clipped, precise. A rhythm I didn’t understand but felt in my bones: command, concession, agreement, silence. When he hung up, the quiet wasn’t relief; it was waiting.

“Three flights tonight,” he said simply, as though mentioning rain. “One to Zurich. One to Dar. One…” His eyes flicked to me, lingered. “Jakarta.”

The word from earlier. My pulse jumped.

“Do you want me to ask?” I said.

Patty moved closer, lowering himself onto the arm of the sofa, close enough that the scent of his cologne clung faintly to the air. He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he reached out, tugging a loose strand of hair behind my ear. The gesture should have been ordinary. It wasn’t. Not with him.

“You already know, Minnie,” he murmured. “You just don’t want to admit it.”

I stared at him. “Know what?”

“That I am not safe.”

The words hung between us, unflinching.

But his hand didn’t move away. It lingered, warm against my cheek, grounding me to a truth I hadn’t wanted to name.

I should have recoiled. I should have pulled back, shaken my head, told him he was wrong. Instead, I found myself whispering the opposite.

“Then why do I feel safer here than anywhere else?”

His eyes softened, just barely, as though the admission cost him something. He leaned in, pressing his forehead briefly against mine, the barest contact too fleeting, too intimate.

“Minnie,” he said, my name low and deliberate, “that’s the most dangerous thing you’ve ever confessed.”

The room seemed to tilt. My breath snagged in my chest, caught between warning and surrender.

Outside, a car horn cut through the night. Somewhere far away, the city kept moving, blind to the quiet storm curling around us.

And in that moment, I realized: this wasn’t a game I could step away from anymore. Not without tearing something vital from myself.

Not without breaking.