The city had teeth, and she could feel them at her back.
She sat by the window, a silhouette carved against the restless glow of the metropolis. Her hair curled in restless tangles, framing a face that time had touched too soon. Shadows pooled under her eyes, thick as ink.
The apartment was too small, too close. A single bulb flickered overhead, throwing erratic shapes across peeling wallpaper. The air smelled of damp concrete and coffee left too long on the burner, bitter enough to linger on the tongue.
Outside, the city sprawled like a living thing, its veins pulsing with neon and shadow. It wasn’t New York, but it could have been. Towers of glass rose high, reflecting the restless churn of the streets below.
Alleyways twisted into dead ends. Signs buzzed in languages she couldn’t read. The hum of hovercars, the wail of sirens, the murmur of voices—constant, unbroken. The city never slept, never slowed. It had no patience for hesitation.
Her fingers tapped the table, an absent rhythm, a song half-forgotten. She thought like them—men. She knew that. She had learned their walk, their laughter, their sharp-edged certainty. But there was something else, something beneath the surface.
A thing she couldn’t name. Not just the way they moved through space as if they owned it. Not just the ease in their voices. It was deeper, threaded through bone and breath, as instinctive as hunger.
“You’re overthinking,” he said from the doorway, exhaling smoke into the dim room. His jacket hung open, sleeves pushed to his elbows. He leaned against the frame like he belonged there. Like he belonged anywhere.
“Am I?” Flat. No curiosity in it. He wouldn’t understand. He had it. Whatever it was. The thing that made existence seamless, effortless. She could only chase the shape of it, the echo.
The walls pressed closer. She stood, chair scraping. “I’m going out.” Coat in hand. He didn’t stop her. He never did.
The streets pulsed around her. The press of bodies. The flicker of lights. She walked fast, moving between strangers like a shadow. A bar loomed ahead, spilling heat and laughter into the cold air. She hesitated, fingertips grazing the doorway.
Inside, the promise of noise, of movement, of distraction. She nearly stepped forward. But what would she find? Another reflection of what she wasn’t?
She kept walking.
The city blurred, neon and night bleeding together. Somewhere, a street performer plucked an instrument she didn’t recognize. Somewhere, a deal was struck in an alley where no one spoke above a whisper. Somewhere, someone laughed without hesitation.
She passed a shop window. The glass caught her image, but something in the reflection didn’t belong to her. A flicker in the eyes, a hollowness just beneath the surface.
She stopped.
For a moment, the world pulled back. The voices, the sirens, the hum of electricity—muted.
It wasn’t about men. It wasn’t about women. It wasn’t about anything she could name. It was the space between—between moments, between people, between knowing and not knowing. The silence between stars. The empty place where something should have been.
She turned from the glass. The city was waiting.
It had teeth. And sooner or later, it would bite.
