Not all ghosts were meant to be feared. Some stayed behind to remind you.
Jaylen sat on the front steps of his childhood home. It was condemned now—windows boarded, weeds taller than his knees—but he had the keys. The city had planned to demolish it, but he asked for one more week. Just to sit.
Just to remember.
The wind rustled through the alley behind the house, the same one where he and Jax used to run, playing stickball with broom handles. He could still hear the echo of his mom's voice calling them in before the streetlights buzzed on.
But not all the memories were sweet.
In the cracked sidewalk just feet away, Jax had bled out after a drive-by. No last words. No mercy. Jaylen was only fifteen.
He closed his eyes.
Jax was still with him—in the caution he carried, the fire he spoke with, the vision he pushed. That ghost never left. It didn't haunt. It fueled.
Inside the house, the floor creaked like it remembered every fight, every laugh, every struggle.
Jaylen walked room to room. He touched the wall where his height was marked in pencil. The closet where he hid his first rhyme book. The kitchen where his mom danced barefoot to Luther Vandross.
Every room whispered: *"Don't forget."*
When he finally locked the door and walked away, he didn't cry.
He didn't need to.
The house wasn't gone. It had moved with him—in his memory, in his mission, in the souls he refused to leave behind.
That night, he recorded a freestyle titled: *"The Ones Who Stayed."* It wasn't for radio. It wasn't for charts. It was for Jax. For Mama. For the block.
For every ghost that stayed so he could keep going.