I'm from the Chi, grew up in the Jets, where every new morning still came with a threat. Elevators stayed broke, so we climbed every flight; gangbangers guarded doors from the morning through night. Stairwells smelled like piss, brick walls sweated heat; we were children in a jungle with cages made of concrete. CPS came knocking. My clothes filled a sack. They carried my body out, but my soul fought back. The system kept moving me, but I grew my own roots. The Jets gave me rhythm. The struggle gave me truth. I'm from the Chi, where the wounded still rise.

They said I could stay, but never said for how long. I learned to live in suitcases, to love in parentheses, to call every room "for now." A borrowed home is still a home — but the walls know they are not yours, and you know the door can open either way.

My anger is red, my grief is gray, my joy is the pale gold of a Chicago morning after a long, long night. I did not know feelings had colors until I was old enough to name them — and young enough to need to.

When my heart feels too full I do not spill — I flood. I have learned to build rooms inside the overflow, to furnish the flood with patience, to live inside the feeling instead of drowning in it.

There is a quiet I keep that is not silence — it is the sound of a storm that has finally passed, the sound of my own breath, returned to me, unborrowed, unbroken, mine.