It’s not a showbiz on-camera, off-camera thing in the hood. After that vicious fight me and Simone had on our Brooklyn block fifteen years ago, right before the cops snatched up both of us, my clothes were shredded.

They’d never catch Winter Santiaga on camera, finally easing outside with some Department of Corrections–issued clothing, which was all inmates had to wear other than the clothes they had on their back at the time of their arrest. When I was first approached to do a reality show that was gonna be so real that it would start with cameras rolling the moment I stepped foot through the prison release door, I was like Ah, hell no! Seated side by side with cellies, I had seen bunches of bitches on reality TV ridiculously playing themselves like crazy.

Seconds after my prison release, right when I was about to earn a big bag, lights out. Everybody know Winter Santiaga is all about action and hustle, plotting and planning, making it and taking it, and a dead bitch can’t do shit. In the prison dayroom chilling, or on the yard, when the conversation got on that suicide bullshit, I stepped off. I even knew six chicks who one by one successfully hung themselves within those fifteen years I served. I knew women who cut themselves, beat themselves, begged other inmates for their meds and swallowed a handful of game- changing pills in one gulp.

Fifteen years on lock, I knew chicks who chased death, thought it was the better option over the rough lives they were living. I don’t have no big fear of death, never really even thought about it. I, Winter Santiaga, am the one who got shot dead. I can’t even hear the howl of the wind, which normally is so loud upstate New York where I was locked up, that we could hear it from inside the prison walls, depending on where we were in the building. I don’t hear the director calling out “Cut!” after first having called out “Action!” I don’t hear the cheers, shout outs, or big ups from the VIP crowd, who I know had gathered, because I am the one who arranged their VIP passes to be the only ones invited to accompany the film crew on my prison release day. I don’t hear no cops calling out bullshit commands, like freeze! I don’t hear the scream of the ambulance or the swift feet of the curious running to the scene of the incident. But after these three shots, I don’t hear no clap back, running feet, or screeching police sirens. niggas, gunshots fired anywhere in the world means pay attention motherfuckers. No matter whose finger is on the trigger, a nigga vs. Gunshots! Brooklyn born, I know the sound.

Life after death sistah souljah