A few weeks went by. Thoughts of returning to Jozi still lingered. Despite the city’s warning against me residing there, I had the peculiar feeling that there was some light amidst the darkness, that there was something for me there.

For some seats, one had to sit directly on the sponge. When I sat down, I felt that my nether regions were absorbing most of the cold. My penis and scrotum had shrunk, even though I was wearing two pairs of pants.

When I was mugged, I was travelling from my Pretoria office and heading home to a shared apartment in the heart of the city. I shared the apartment with my friend Mzo, and I had just been placed in a graduate program with a large financial institution.

It was a strange disease, embodying the characteristics of severe flu. She was sick with it. She was seventy years old. Many years ago when she was a young woman she had a daughter, and the daughter had a son, and when her daughter died from complications resulting from birth, she was left with her grandson and she clutched on to him like how she did her purse when she went to town.

When I tried to stand up to leave the office, I realized that I couldn’t move. An overpowering, peculiar kind of emotional pain weighed me down, forcing me back onto my chair. It was the pain of denial.