Stories by billyjoe gray

 Detention island by Billy Joe gray  Author’s Note: This Is How We Stay This book was not written. It was memorable. Ritualized. Breathed into being. It began as silence. It aches. As a question I could not name. It became a spiral. A sanctuary. A place where survival could speak. I did not write this for resolution. I wrote this for return. For the boys who were never named. For the breath that was never held. For the stories that were never allowed to stay. Detention Island is not fiction. It is a memory. It is a myth. It is the shape of what we carry when we are told to forget. Joshua, Micah, Silas, and Lior are not characters. They are echoes. They are rituals. They are the breath I needed when mine was trembling. This book is for the ones who stayed. For the ones who were told they were too much, too quiet, too broken, too late. For the ones who carved spirals into notebooks and whispered names into the dark. It is for the queer kids. The neurodivergent kids. The ones who...