Jamal K.

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USA250 Journal Project

Personal Chronicle: July 4, 2025 – July 5, 2026
A gift for reflection. A record of now. A story for what’s next.

✍️ “Who am I?”

Jamal Knight – Detroit, Michigan

Some nights, I’m still that kid waiting on a porch that never lit up.

Other nights, I’m the soldier with steady hands and a shattered center.

I walk quiet. Listen hard.
I count the sounds that keep me here—drum taps, radiator hums, Miss Cora’s voice praying over greens.

I’m not what happened to me, but I’m marked by it.

I used to fix wounds with gauze and grit.
Now I try to stitch something back together with rhythm, rhyme, and rooms that echo.

I’m learning that silence was never strength. Just armor.

These days, I write in pencil—because I’m still becoming.
And because some truths need soft edges.

✍️ “How did I get here?”

Jamal Knight – Detroit, Michigan

It started with a mother who vanished and a grandmother who didn’t.

East Side Detroit.
Cracked sidewalks, gospel on Sundays, sirens at night.
Miss Cora raised me on prayer, pots of beans, and the word “stay.”

But I didn’t.

I ran to the Army at eighteen.
Said it was for the GI Bill, but really I wanted silence loud enough to drown the ghosts.

I was a medic.
Patched up strangers in places that looked like the bones of cities.
Came home with hands that shook and a heart too loud to sleep through.

Lost myself on the street.
Two years of drift—train stations, shelters, liquor store porches, nowhere soft.

Then came the shelter with a locked door and a church with a music room.
Then Dre. Then drum circles. Then Jenna.
Then this… halfway life that might actually lead to something whole.

I still flinch at sudden noises.
Still walk like I’m checking corners.
But I’ve stayed sober ninety-one days.

And when the beat comes—steady, low, rising—I remember that I’m still here.

Still here.

And maybe even healing.