What’s the bravest thing you’ve ever done this year?
Told the truth.
To him.
Walked away.
Wrote about it.
He was the kind of man
who turned a highway
into a battlefield.
A horn.
A gesture.
A stranger driving
too slowly.
Then anger—
His hands
finding another man’s body
before his mind
could find his next excuse.
He beat men
for crossing his path.
And at home,
the road came with him.
There was always
another line to cross.
A hand around a throat.
A body shoved backward.
A woman pushed into a bed
because his anger
needed somewhere to land.
And Trazi—
his female dog—
learned his anger, too.
He beat her
and called her
stupid bitch.
As though cruelty
became less cruel
when spoken to an animal.
Then came the words
he used against the woman.
Crazy.
Whore.
Fucking Bitch.
Words he could repeat
until they sounded
like evidence.
He lied
until the lie became
a room he lived inside.
And when she opened the door
and let the truth in,
he blamed her
for the light.
You’re not the moral police.
No.
She wasn’t.
She was simply
the person who remembered
what happened.
He could rewrite
the argument.
Rewrite
the marriage.
Rewrite
the ending.
But he couldn’t rewrite
the body.
Bruises remember.
Fear remembers.
The nervous system
keeps its own clock.
Tick.
The hand closes.
Tock.
The door shuts.
Tick.
He tells his story.
Tock.
She tells hers.
And somewhere
beneath every accusation
he threw at her,
there remains
the smallest, darkest truth:
he needed everyone else
to be wrong.
He needed
there to be no God.
Because if there were,
someone might be watching.
Someone might remember.
Someone might hold him
accountable.
Time passes.
Truth talks.
And the man
who spent so long
trying to control
the story
is no longer
the one writing it
but the one
reading it.
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