My lawyers say I have to keep this brief.
Let’s skip the global cartel mythology.
Let’s skip counting who’s dead and who’s still in jail.
Let’s skip what it feels like to hear a bullet graze past my hair.
Here is the actual, unglamorous math of my current reality:
I may have a lifetime of probation, and just enough change in my pocket for a single cheeseburger, not a double.
I consider this a blessed trade-off for a life sentence I was staring at.
The story writes itself.
Corner Boy.
City.
Interstate.
International.
Then somehow…
Back on the same corner wondering what’s next.
People might think beating a life sentence changed me.
It really didn’t.
The rearrangement came later.
The courtroom closed one chapter.
My routines hadn’t noticed.
I spent the months afterward celebrating my blessing by shoveling powder up my nose like nothing had happened.
One ordinary Tuesday afternoon, my nose decided it had enough.
It wasn’t a nosebleed.
It was a bloody thunderstorm.
I scrambled for the nearest off-ramp and sat there waiting for the bleeding to stop.
Looking at the pool of blood on my jeans, I couldn’t honestly tell what had changed.
But that wasn’t what bewildered me.
What bewildered me was how ordinary it all felt.
I figured this was simply who I was. And I was fine with it.
Then…
I met Mimi.
My gaze changed.
Loving her quietly rearranged the way I measured myself.
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