The block was quieter than usual that winter.
Not because people weren't around—but because they were *listening*.
Jaylen's movement had shifted the tone. People who once shouted to be heard were now learning to speak with purpose. Even the neighborhood's hardest corners had softened just a little. But peace doesn't come easy in places built on struggle.
One cold evening, a mural was unveiled across the side of an abandoned bodega. It stretched wide—painted in bright reds, golds, and blues. Faces of those lost to the streets—Tariq, Big Dre, Keisha, Lil' Smoke—all staring out, frozen in time, with words beneath:
*"You may silence our voices, but you'll never mute our echoes."*
Arielle helped organize the unveiling. She stood at the front, reading a poem she'd written for the occasion:
> *"We lost them to steel, but we carry their fire.
> Our footsteps echo loud—our grief builds choirs.
> You took their bodies, but not their name—
> We sing them in silence, we speak them in flame."*
Jaylen couldn't speak when it was his turn. He just raised his hand and placed it against Tariq's face on the wall.
Behind him, the crowd followed, one by one. A community united by pain—but refusing to be defined by it.
Later that night, Jaylen sat on his stoop with Arielle beside him.
> "Sometimes I feel like I'm just holding it all together with tape," he admitted.
> "But it's still holding," she replied softly. "And that's what matters."
Above them, the streetlights hummed.
Below them, the city kept moving.
And inside them—those lost voices kept echoing.