Shock swam across the room like a shark. Jaws broke with disbelief. Some men gasped and held their old hands to their mouths. Others just froze. I could have nudged them over. My arms were still riding high in the air and I was exhaling like a maniac. I swallowed quickly and screamed again, “You've wrung me out too many times! You got that? Too many times!” I let out one last breath and made for the door. They whispered to each other and I didn't care.

The air in my country is never cold, but tonight it could have snowed. I stepped to the rate of my heart and kept a sobered eye upon the path I trod. My thoughts ran to my family, the very men I worked for. They knew my habits and my addictions well. No man in my family has been as rash to relinquished himself from his work, and no man in this nation would have been as stupid to walk from the kind of money I made. To them, my liberty would crisply translate to abandonment. My shining moment was just ludicrous enough to get me killed.

I have come to resent that we called it work at all. We have spread our kitchen tables with its surplus, feeding on children and their salty tears. As a young man I held tenderness and impressionability as high as my soles, and my worth was as ripe as my own disgusting greed. What was theirs was mine, and what was mine was a parasite of perpetual robbery. If only my greed could fathom the blow of the innocence I have already killed. But this thievery I saw no longer for I believed in something better for my nation, my fellow sisters. The scars I have dug and the graves I have scratched upon shall no longer be mine. My story must change, even if it means running from my own front door for the rest of my life. I now break the soiled washboard and bite the familiar hands that wring: the fibers of my essence will henceforth be spared and the virtue of my character one day restored. I will choose the line and the pins that will hang my sins to dry.

The Hang Me Up t-shirt is made with love In sunny Los Angeles. By Love Nail Tree.