WHEN LAGOS SLEEPS

The City at 3:17am

Lagos does not sleep, it loosens.

At exactly 3:17 a.m., the city exhales not loudly, not dramatically, but with the quiet decisiveness of something removing its mask. The generators falter, the traffic releases its grip, buildings soften at the edges like bodies easing out of armor. That was the hour I first understood that insomnia can be a form of permission. I was standing by the window, barefoot on cold tile watching the street below tilt slightly to the left. It wasn’t dramatic just enough to be undeniable. A road I had walked for years curved where it never had before like it was correcting a long held lie.

Behind me, Emeka slept his breathing was even, confident. The sound of someone certain the world would hold without him watching it I loved him for that certainty i feared it too. A streetlight pulsed once, twice,the air thickened with meaning I did not think this is impossible

I thought, so this is what it’s been waiting to show me.I slipped on my slippers and stepped outside.The night accepted me as if it had been rehearsing.

Emeka woke when the door clicked shut he always did even in sleep, he tracked my absence like a tide.

“Derin,” he murmured, voice heavy. “Come back.” I hesitated. Love is rarely loud It is a hand closing gently around your wrist, a warmth that says stay. And for a moment, I almost did.

“You don’t have to carry everything,” he said, eyes still closed.

He meant it kindly that was the problem.

I pressed a kiss into his palm and stepped away before the night could change its mind. Outside, Lagos breathed against my skin.

The kiosk appeared when I turned around one moment there was nothing, the next rusted zinc, flickering bulb, a man standing like he had always been there.

“You see,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes,” I replied.

He studied me with the patience of someone measuring loss.

“They always do at first.”

“Who?”

“The ones the city opens.”

He introduced himself as Baba Kola, and warned me with the tired mercy of someone who had already paid.

“You can walk Lagos while it remembers itself,” he said. “But memory is not free.”

“What does it cost?”

He looked past me, toward the waking horizon.

“Whatever you love enough to cling to.”