I never meant for any of this to happen.
That’s the first thing I’d tell you if we ever met.
You might see me on the street — hood up, eyes low, looking like trouble — and think you already know me. But you don’t. Not really. You don’t know what it’s like growing up where a postcode means more than a name, where respect is borrowed on credit you can’t repay.
I’m from south Manchester, born and raised. Grey blocks, corner shops, and sirens that sing you to sleep. Mum tried, you know. Proper tried. Worked two jobs, kept the house clean, made sure there was always food — even if it was just beans on toast. But there’s only so much one woman can do when the world outside’s louder than her voice.
Dad? Gone. Some story about moving up north for work. Haven’t seen him since I was eight. Left a box of football stickers and a promise he never kept. So when the boys on the estate started talking tough, flashing trainers and phones I couldn’t dream of affording, I listened.
That’s how it starts — quiet.
One favour. One night. One small thing that doesn’t seem like much.
For me, it was a lookout job.
“Just shout if you see feds,” they said.
I did. Got a tenner for it. Thought I was winning.
You feel part of something for once. The older lot nod at you, call you “fam.” You walk different after that. Shoulders up, chin high, like you matter. But what they don’t tell you is that the same people who hype you up will vanish the minute things get loud.
I remember the first time I held a shank.
It weren’t even mine.
Jay brought it round, wrapped in a Tesco bag like it was a loaf of bread.
He said, “Bruv, just in case. Man can’t be slipping out here.”
I laughed at first. Thought it was a joke. But he looked serious, eyes cold.
That’s how it is here — everyone’s scared, but no one admits it. Fear turns to armour, and armour turns to ego. You start carrying because everyone else is. “Protection,” you tell yourself, like that word makes it righteous.
It didn’t take long before I had my own.
Kitchen knife, short blade, handle wrapped in tape.
I kept it under my pillow at first, just knowing it was there. Felt safer.
Then one day I took it out with me.
That was the day everything changed.
There’s this road that cuts through the middle of the estate — Bramble Avenue.
We used to post up there, just talking, laughing, chatting nonsense. Jay, little Riz, and me. Sometimes music from someone’s phone, cheap energy drinks, the whole world feeling like it was ours.
But that week there’d been tension. Some boys from Moss Side were moving reckless, stepping on our patch, mouthing off. I didn’t care about turf or territory — I cared about respect. That word eats you alive.
“Man can’t let them walk over us,” Jay said. “They think we’re soft?”
He spat on the pavement.
Riz nodded, half scared, half excited.
Me? I said nothing. Just listened, feeling the knife in my pocket press against my leg like a heartbeat.
The day it happened, the air felt wrong. You ever feel that? Like the world’s holding its breath.
We got word the Moss Side boys were coming down.
Five of them, maybe six.
Jay was already pacing, phone in hand, hoodie up.
“Yo, we ride out tonight. No backing down.”
I should’ve walked away.
I should’ve said, “Nah, this ain’t me.”
But pride’s a poison that tastes sweet at first.
We met them near the car park behind the Co-op. Concrete, graffiti, bins overflowing.
Words were shouted.
Someone pushed someone.
And before I could even think, blades came out.
I don’t remember drawing mine — it just appeared in my hand, like it moved by itself.
There was shouting, running, chaos.
A flash of silver. A grunt.
And then — silence.
I looked down.
Riz was on the ground.
Blood spreading through his hoodie like ink on paper.
For a second, everything stopped.
Jay froze. The other boys ran.
It was just me and Riz.
He looked at me, eyes wide, mouth opening but no sound coming out.
I dropped the knife.
Knees hit concrete.
Hands shaking, pressing on the wound like that would help.
“Stay with me, bro,” I said. “Come on, stay with me.”
But the light in his eyes was already fading.
I didn’t even realise the knife he was stabbed with wasn’t mine until later.
Didn’t matter.
Didn’t matter who did it, whose hand it came from — we were all guilty.
The sirens came quick.
Neighbours watching from windows.
Someone screamed.
Jay bolted.
I didn’t move. Just sat there, blood on my hands, Riz’s head in my lap.
The feds pulled up. Blue lights bouncing off the walls.
“Drop the weapon!” they shouted, but I already had.
Next thing I knew, I was on the ground, face pressed to the cold, cuffs biting my wrists.
I kept saying his name, over and over, like maybe that would bring him back.
Riz died before the ambulance arrived.
Fifteen years old.
He still had braces on his teeth.
They held me for questioning.
Said they’d seen me with a knife.
Didn’t matter that it wasn’t me who stabbed him — I was part of it.
Joint enterprise, they call it.
Mum came to the station.
Eyes red, hands shaking.
She didn’t even speak at first. Just looked at me like she didn’t recognise who I was.
And maybe she didn’t.
“I worked so hard,” she whispered. “So hard to keep you safe.”
I had nothing to say.
What do you say when you’ve broken your mother’s heart?
I got out on bail eventually.
Jay disappeared — no one’s seen him since.
The streets were quieter after that.
People looked at me different. Not respect — fear.
It felt like the walls of the estate were closing in.
I couldn’t sleep.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Riz’s face.
He used to talk about leaving, getting a job at a garage, saving up for a car.
He had plans. Real ones.
Now he’s a photo on a wall, candles burned down to stubs underneath.
Weeks passed.
Funeral came and went.
His mum didn’t even look at me.
Can’t blame her.
The priest said words about forgiveness and peace, but none of it landed.
The air in that church felt heavy, like guilt had a smell.
After that, I stopped going out.
Stopped answering calls.
Just sat in my room, staring at the knife I still had hidden — the one I didn’t use.
I could’ve thrown it away. Should’ve.
But part of me couldn’t.
Because that knife was everything I’d become.
I started walking late at night, when no one was around.
Past the shops, past the bus stop where we used to laugh, past the spot where Riz fell.
Sometimes I’d sit there and talk to him, quietly.
Tell him I was sorry.
Tell him it should’ve been me.
I thought about ending it more than once.
But then I’d hear my mum in the next room, praying under her breath.
She still hasn’t given up on me, and that’s the only reason I’m still here.
You know what’s mad?
After everything, the boys still carry.
Still talk about respect and protection like it’s armour.
They don’t get it.
I didn’t either, not till it was too late.
You think a blade makes you safe.
You think a gun makes you strong.
But all it does is steal your future before you even get a chance to live it.
I’ve seen what it does.
I’ve felt it in my hands.
And I’d give anything — anything — to go back and leave that knife where it belonged.
Now I walk past kids like I used to be.
Hoods up, eyes cold, talking about ops and moves like it’s all a game.
And I want to grab them, shake them, tell them the truth.
It’s not big.
It’s not clever.
It’s not funny.
It’s people’s lives you’re playing with.
Could be your son, your dad, your brother, your best mate.
It could be you.
One second, one stupid decision, and everything changes.
And then you’re left like me — haunted, hollow, trying to put back what can’t be fixed.
Sometimes I dream about Riz.
He’s still wearing that same grey hoodie, still smiling.
In the dream, we’re back by the corner shop, laughing about something dumb.
Then I wake up, and it’s just the dark and the silence.
I don’t cry anymore.
The tears ran out.
All that’s left is the ache.
People ask me what I’d say if I could talk to him one more time.
I think about that a lot.
Maybe I’d tell him I’m sorry.
Maybe I’d tell him he deserved better friends.
Maybe I’d tell him to go home that night.
But I can’t.
All I can do now is tell you.
You — whoever’s reading this, whoever’s listening.
Don’t make my mistake.
Don’t pick up that blade.
Don’t think you need it to be safe, to be seen, to be respected.
Because when it’s all said and done, all it gives you is silence, regret, and a name on a headstone.
I still live in the same flat.
Mum doesn’t talk about that night anymore.
Sometimes she leaves the telly on too loud, just so the silence doesn’t swallow us.
I’m trying to do better.
Started volunteering with this youth group down the road.
They let me tell my story to the younger ones.
Some listen. Some don’t.
But if even one of them hears me — really hears me — maybe Riz didn’t die for nothing.
Last week, I walked past a group of lads by the bus stop.
One of them nodded at me.
I recognised that look — the same one I used to have.
Restless. Angry. Hungry for respect.
He said, “Yo, you used to roll with Jay, innit?”
I nodded, slow.
“Yeah,” I said. “Used to.”
He smirked. “Man still got that blade?”
And for the first time in a long time, I smiled.
“Not anymore, bruv,” I said. “I put that down.”
He laughed, like he didn’t believe me.
But maybe, just maybe, he’ll remember that one day when it’s his turn to choose.
Sometimes the only way to make peace with the past is to warn the ones still walking toward it.
So if you take anything from what I’ve said — take this:
Violence doesn’t make you strong.
It makes you smaller.
It takes your future, your friends, your family, and leaves you standing in the dark, holding nothing.
So please — I’m begging you —
put the weapons down.
Before it’s too late.
to anyone that has experienced something like this, you have our condolences
