CHAPTER FOUR:
1459 Words
The sun melted into the Accra skyline like warm honey, draping everything in a golden haze. In Ashaiman, the heat lingered, sticking to skin and thought alike.
The streets bustled as usual— hawkers yelling out prices of secondhand clothes, trotro mates banging metal doors in a rush to fill seats, and children weaving barefoot through alleyways.
Ashaiman’s nights were never truly dark.
Even when the electricity blinked out and the streetlamps choked on their wires, there were always something car headlights in the distance, the glow of a charcoal stove, the muted flicker of someone’s rechargeable torchlight escaping from a window.
And on this particular night, there was the moon.
Full. Bold. Pale as bone.
Kwame stared at it from his spot on the roof, lying flat on the cracked concrete, hands behind his head.
He liked it up there—above the shouting neighbors, the wailing babies, the endless pounding of fufu from the chop bar next door.
Up here, it was just the sky and him.
The cool air clung to his skin, sticky with the sweat of a long day.
But tonight, he wasn’t just thinking.
He was waiting.
His phone buzzed beside him. He knew who it was before checking.
Ama: “Do you ever feel like you’re not alone even when no one is around?”
“Do you think it’s possible to be terrified of happiness?”
He swallowed. The message wasn’t eerie. Not exactly.
But something about it sent a soft chill down his spine.
He typed: “Yeah.
All the time. Sometimes that’s the scariest kind of not-alone.”
She replied instantly: “Can we meet?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Where?”
A minute later, she sent her location. Not the neem tree.
Not the library garden. Somewhere new. Secluded.
He stood up, wiped the back of his neck, and walked outside.
“Where are you going?” Ma Abena asked, half-turning from her cooking. “Library,” Kwame said.
“Again? You were just there yesterday.” “I know. We have a group assignment.”
She squinted at him but said nothing more.
It was the old music room behind the abandoned arts block.
The one no one used anymore. Not since a window broke and someone said the place was haunted.
Kwame grabbed his shirt as he jumped the back wall.
Ama waited inside the room, lit only by a dying flashlight propped up on an old xylophone.
She was sitting cross-legged on top of the grand piano, hugging her knees.
The flashlight cast wild shadows around the room dancing across cracked walls, curling around broken instruments, making her hair gleam like silk in moonlight.
“You came,” she said, voice like warm smoke.
“You sent for me like a ghost. What choice did I have?” he teased, walking slowly in.
The floor creaked under his steps. The wind rattled the broken window. Somewhere, a stray cat yowled.
Ama didn’t smile. Not yet.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she whispered. “The room felt heavy. Like it was remembering something I didn’t want to.”
Kwame sat beside her on the piano, close but not touching. “You mean like it was haunted?” She gave him a sideways look.
“Aren’t we all haunted?”
For a moment, neither of them said anything.
The silence wasn’t awkward. It was deep. Alive. Sometimes silence between them was its language.
“I brought this,” she said, holding up her notebook.
“It’s not much.
Just something I wrote tonight.” She handed it to him.
Kwame opened to the latest page.
Some nights the silence holds me too tightly.
Some nights the darkness feels like a promise.
Some nights I remember...
And some nights, I pray to forget.
He read it twice. Then looked at her.
“You scare me,” he said softly.
Her brow lifted. “Why?”
“Because every time you show me a piece of yourself, it feels like something I’m not ready to hold.
But I want to. God help me, I want to.”
Her breath caught. “Then hold it carefully.” And so he did.
Not her body. Not yet.
Just her silence.
Her fear.
Her presence.
Outside, the wind howled
Inside, Ama slid off the piano, barefoot now, and walked toward the mirror at the front of the room.
It was cracked, dust-coated, a ghost of its former glory. She stared at it.
“I used to practice dancing here,” she murmured. “Before they closed the place down. Before everything else.”
Kwame stood, watching her reflection.
She turned to him suddenly. Her eyes were darker in the low light. Not dangerous. Just deep. Inviting.
“Dance with me,” she said.
He raised a brow. “To what music?”
“To whatever we hear.”
Kwame chuckled. “Ama, I have no rhythm.”
“Neither do I. But maybe we can stumble together.”
She walked to him, slowly, barefoot against concrete. He offered his hand. She didn’t take it.
Instead, she placed her hand against his chest, right over his heart.
“You’re always warm,” she said. “You’re always cold,” he replied. “Opposites,” she whispered.
“Or balance,” he whispered back.
And then they moved. No rhythm. No real steps. Just swaying. Breathing. Existing in each other’s orbit. He felt the rise and fall of her chest against his, the way her hair tickled his neck when she tilted her head slightly. They stood in the awkward warmth of wanting but fearing. Then Ama pressed her forehead to his chest. No words. Just a lean
“You smell like rain,” he said suddenly.
She looked up. “That’s oddly specific.”
“Not really. It’s like... fresh and electric. Like something’s about to happen.”
Ama leaned back enough to look at him. Her lips were parted slightly.
“Do you want something to happen?”
Kwame swallowed. His voice was low. “That depends. Do you?”
She didn’t answer. But her hand slid up, just a little. Resting at the side of his neck now. Her pulse was racing. He could feel it.
“Let’s make that dream real someday,” he said. “Maybe not with dancing, because I have two left feet. But the freedom part.”
“You said you wouldn’t kiss me unless I wanted it,” she said.
“I remember.”
“What if I told you I’m not sure... if I want to... or if I just want to want to?”
He stepped back, just enough to cool the fire in the room.
“Then we wait. I’m not here to take it. I’m here to stay.”
That broke something.
Ama leaned forward and rested her forehead against his chest again. “I hate how safe I feel with you,” she whispered.
“Why?”
“Because I know what happens when I start to believe in safety.”
He brushed a thumb across her back. Not her waist. Not her hips. Just the space between her shoulder blades.
“Borrow it, then,” he said. “Just for tonight.”
They stayed like that for an hour.
When they finally left, the moon had shifted, casting longer shadows through the broken windows. Ama turned before stepping into her hostel gate.
“You’re dangerous, Kwame.”
He tilted his head. “Because I make you feel things?”
“Because you make me want to.”
She didn’t say goodbye.
Just slipped inside.
Kwame didn’t go home. Not immediately.
He wandered the empty football field, sat on the bleachers, and stared at the moon. Kwame closed his eyes.
He thought of Ama’s body not in the way he thought of Efua’s, all heat and sweat and guilt. But in fragments. The way her fingers trembled. The way her collarbone looked when she tilted her head. The curve of her back when she breathed.
Back at home, Ma Abena was praying again. The radio buzzed with static scripture. Esi was asleep on the mat. Kofi was coughing again.
Kwame slipped a few cedis into his mother’s purse and sat at the window. The breeze touched his skin like a whisper.
He opened his Bible.
Didn’t read it.
Just held it.
Then, without really meaning to, he sent Ama a message.
“I don’t know what this is. But it feels like light I’m not supposed to have.” She replied: “Borrow it. Just for tonight.”
And so he did.
Outside, the moon danced over Ashaiman.
And somewhere between broken hearts and whispered fears, a new rhythm began.
- Writer
