You thought there was an uncommon charm to his name, Kosisochukwu, attractive as the bearer of the name, with skin a deep shade of tree barks; you woke up each morning at the ringing of the bells suffused with the consolation that you both were the best of cell mates. Even though you flinched when he leaned forwards to rest his head against your shoulder. And when you imagined you both as a couple – he the spouse whose wild sex made the thought of infidelity too forgiving of you – it was with a wariness born of the worry that they would recognize the longing, on your face, to run your tongue past the curl of his lips. It made you wish for the times the inmates preoccupied themselves with long-winded arguments flung back and forth about football or grumblings about the rains that slid in many places through the ceiling, the meager meals the wardens served only when they remembered. So that, as you both perched so close to each other with your arms laced round your raised knees, your eyes wouldn’t stray to the window when he threw an arm round your shoulder, and you counted down the seconds before he slipped it away. He would whisper words into your ear with suppressed amusement, whisperings that you derided yourself later for failing to return. At night when the bodies all around you turned so often that one doubted they were asleep, you replayed and invented scenes with him in your mind’s eye, saddened at the lack of privacy to touch yourself. He was nineteen, two years younger than you and you envied his ability to trace the dense sprinkle of hair on your legs with his fingers, once, and joke aloud about shaving them – unaware that your body had stiffened as some of the inmates glanced your way and you felt time stall; every breath the inmates took, every movement, magnified in the periphery of your vision. You heard in your head the cadence of the wordsone of them was bound to say in such circumstance –“Dis guy, shay you be homo sef?” – and because they afforded only an indifferent glance when he said something in general, which he often did, you convinced yourself that these men and boys were bidding their time. Before they began to resent the ease of his palm encircling your upper arm – his head cocked a bit to the side – as you and the rest of your cell mates filed back to the cell after the drudgery of a manual labor. Before this brought them the need to remind themselves that you both lacked the air to discourage confrontation: the odd satisfaction that there were people in the same condition as they. You took pleasure in being tagged mute by some of your cellmates, because you said little in most side conversations. But every other day there was the reminder that uttering words of discomfort when one of them kicked your torso repeatedly in his sleep, for instance, was like stepping into a slippery terrain. At first you’d imagined the choreographed sneering and mock-catcalls that emphasized how unconventional you both were, trailing whatever you did at the slightest prompting, even when there was no taunting. It was difficult to think of having them pass you around to please themselves at night, the feel of their erections against your rear lingering days after. They were the kind who inflicted such punishment in between staged rounds of “general beating”. Years ago, the films you’d watched in which prisoners scaled high walls to freedom had made you believe in the inevitability of jailbreaks, and so you began to consider the possibility of waiting for one. Not that the cells here were built for that purpose. Not that you could possibly tell whether or not the inmates held the thought in a tight clasp. Breaking out of jail with Kosi implied an ending to the uneasiness you felt in second guessing what even an inmate’s finger pointing in your direction portended. It surprised you that you stopped yourself from saying certain things you wanted to tell him, such as this, only making humming sounds to his own words as you were and studying the black mole above his lips. One morning, you had glanced beyond your shoulder at the teasing look on his face as you and the rest of your cell mates jogged round the yard sweaty. You did not return his smirk that grew into a smile at you, could not tell if it was grounds to apologize. You ached to ask him if the thought to fuck you had ever occurred to him. In your mind you’d willed him to recoil at the question, you pictured the tranquil hate in his eyes seconds before he told you off to mean mockery at your presumptuousness. You thought of wearing a haughty facial expression around him often, so he would catch a glimpse of your need to have him avoid you. And then you wanted to laugh at the absurdity of a love that existed, knowing it never stood a chance to compete in the first place.  

Biography

Ndukwe Uchenna Raphael currently lives in Owerri, Nigeria. A budding pencil artist, he writes to make sense of the mundane around him.