Buried, Broke, Then Chosen

Hunger was a blade that carved my name into me long before anyone else bothered to say it, so when the man in the pressed suit spoke it aloud in that reeking alley, it felt less like a greeting and more like a verdict finally catching up. He offered me a year in a dead man’s house, a grandfather-shaped ghost I’d never met, and a future wired to rules that read like a plea bargain: stay in school, stay in therapy, stay alive. The car behind the strip mall had started to feel like a coffin I was slowly agreeing to, so I followed, not out of trust but exhaustion. I thought the worst thing that could happen was learning I didn’t belong in a house like that; I didn’t know yet that the hardest part would be learning how to stay, to eat, to wake without apologizing for still being al… Continues…