The Broken Line

He’s sitting across the table from me, but he hasn’t said a word.

Not yet.

Just watches, like he always did when we were young and I was too quick with my lies.

The tea between us has gone cold.

So has the light.

The curtains are open, and Berlin—what’s left of it—sprawls out below in bruised dusk. The same city that built us. The same city that broke us.

---

I was twenty-four when the wall went up.

It felt like it happened in a single night—one minute you’re walking your usual shortcut home through Mitte, and the next, your country’s a cage. They said it was temporary. They said it was protection. They always said something.

My brother and I were split like a coin dropped on a border—tails on one side, heads on the other. He lived with our aunt in the West. I lived with our father in the East. I wrote once. He didn’t answer. I told myself he was angry. Or scared. Or busy.

Years passed.

The wall stayed.

And I joined the Ministry of State Security.