"The bread was always stale and she'd say she'd already eaten." 

I wasn't supposed to hear that.

June 2013. A grime MC on a fire escape in Tottenham - red tracksuit dark with sweat, hot rain on concrete that smelled like the whole city was exhaling, cigarette burning to nothing between his fingers - telling me the real answer to a question he'd already given me the fake answer to.

His mum working night shifts at Tesco. Skipping meals so he could afford the bus fare to a studio in Enfield. He was sixteen when he worked it out because the bread was always stale.

That's what his biggest track was actually about. Not "keeping it real." Not "letting the music speak for itself."

"Don't use that bit though, yeah?"

Four times in twenty minutes. Every time he gave me something extraordinary, he'd try to take it back. Hand me the polished version instead. The one that sounded like every other interview that month.

The media-trained stuff was forgettable by the next day. The stuff he tried to take back was the only thing worth printing.

So I printed it. Cos that was my job.

You're doing the same thing right now.

Every post you write. Every email you agonise over. Every time you sit down to explain what you actually do and the sentence starts with "I help ambitious women..." - you're handing people the safe version.

You had an opinion that felt too spicy so you deleted it. You wrote something too personal and it's still sitting in your drafts. You typed a sentence and thought "I can't say that" and backspaced the whole thing.

And they scrolled right past you. Not because you said something wrong.

Because you didn't say the thing that would've made them stay.