He turned abruptly on his heels and marched away.

September

Janice came to see me two days after I wrote her the Sappho. I thought, she has discovered my secret messages, my scriptive Morse tucked innocently in the lines of the poems I’ve written her.

Two o’clock is compulsory siesta time. The opening of the cell door brought me awake. My limbs felt heavy and lifeless. I feared I might have an infection. The warder came directly to me.

‘Oya, get up. The superintendent wan see you.’ His skin was coarse, coal black. He was fat and his speech came out in laboured gasps. ‘Oya, get up. Get up,’ he repeated impatiently.

I was in that lethargic, somnambulistic state condemned people surely fall into when, in total inanition and despair, they await their fate – without fear or hope, because nothing can be changed. No dew-wet finger of light would come poking into the parched gloom of the abyss they tenant. I did not want to write any more poems for the superintendent’s lover. I did not want any more of his cigarettes. I was tired of being pointed at behind my back, of being whispered about by the other inmates as the superintendent’s informer, his fetch-water. I wanted to recover my lost dignity. Now I realized that I really had no ‘self’ to express; that self had flown away from me the day the chains touched my hands. What is left here is nothing but a mass of protruding bones, unkempt hair and tearful eyes; an asshole for shitting and farting, and a penis that in the mornings grows turgid in vain. This leftover self, this sea-bleached wreck panting on the iron-filing sands of the shores of this penal island is nothing but hot air, and hair, and ears cocked, hopeful…

So I said to the warder, ‘I don’t want to see him today. Tell him I’m sick.’

The fat face contorted. He raised his baton in Pavlovian response. ‘What!’ But our eyes met. He was smart enough to decipher the bold ‘No Trespassing’ sign written in mine. Smart enough to obey. He moved back, shrugging. ‘Na you go suffer!’ he blustered, and left.

I was aware of the curious eyes staring at me. I closed mine. I willed my mind over the prison walls to other places. Free. I dreamt of standing under the stars, my hands raised, their tips touching the blinking, pulsating electricity of the stars. The rain would be falling. There’d be nothing else: just me and rain and stars and my feet on the wet, downy grass earthing the electricity of freedom.