NEVER APOLOGIZE

(They tried to erase me. This is what I brought back.)

9 weeks ago, people I trusted tried to make me disappear.

I won’t tell you who.

I won’t tell you why.

I won’t tell you which country I was in when I decided they could go fuck themselves.

I won’t tell you what it sounded like when I stopped answering the phone, or how quiet a hotel room gets when you realize the only man holding you prisoner is the version of yourself who still gives a fuck what the world thinks of him.

I killed that man. Left his body in the room. Walked out.

Now I’m home.

They tried to take this from me.

Picture a girl on a sun soaked balcony in Oahu. Tan lines like God drew them with a ruler, one of my white shirts hanging off her shoulder, coffee in her left hand, the ocean behind her so blue it looks fake.

She’s looking at me the way she looked at me at arrivals with mascara she’d already ruined before I cleared customs. Her eyes say the same thing the island says every morning.

Welcome to paradise. We are free here.