The Boutique Owner Told Me to Stay Quiet Before I Heard Something I Was Not Meant to Hear

for a while.

“Were you ever scared?” she asked.

“Every day,” I told her. “But I did not solve fear by hurting people.”

She was quiet. Then she said, “I thought you stayed quiet because you were weak.”

“Sometimes staying quiet is weakness,” I said. “Sometimes speaking up is strength. The hard part is knowing which moment you are in.”

She looked up at me continue reading …