#93Days
93 DAYS
By Zakes Mdluli
They gave me sixteen years of concrete and one caged hour of sky a day, and in ninety-three days they will hand me across the border to the rope. I stopped counting anything that matters a long time ago. Then a newspaper found its way into my cell. A photograph. A byline: Ayanda Mabandla. She thinks the interviews were her big break. She was not chosen by chance — nothing that connects the two of us is chance, and if she ever traces it all the way down, it will break her open. She comes every week in that mustard scarf, sets her little tape recorder on the steel, and asks whether I feel remorse. She flinches at the polite words and holds steady through the ones that should terrify her. She has spent her whole life believing the darkness in her is a flaw to be hidden. I have ninety-three days to show her what it actually is. These walls have held me for sixteen years. The people counting my days down should be asking a better question: what happens when I decide they are finished holding me.
63 chapters · 7 hr
