Freedom didn’t arrive with a sense of relief.
It arrived smelling like fuel exhaust, burnt coffee, and cold metal—the unmistakable scent of a bus station just before sunrise. It tasted like a world that had kept moving while I stood still. I walked out through the iron gates holding a transparent plastic bag that contained everything I owned: two flannel shirts, a dog-eared copy of The Count of Monte Cristo with a broken spine, and the heavy quiet you collect after three years of being told your words don’t matter.
Yet as my boots hit the fractured pavement, my thoughts weren’t on prison.
Not on the noise.
