by Joely Williams

Trouble has a way of finding us even when we’ve stopped moving. It hums in the pipes, in the cracked tile where the light breaks differently every morning. Sometimes it’s small – a text we shouldn’t send, a name we keep rehearsing forgiveness for. Other times, it’s ancestral, the kind of ache that shows up in our hips, in our mother’s silence when someone mentions God. I used to think trouble was loud – sirens, shouting, slammed doors. Now I know it’s the whisper that asks, what if you are not meant to be good? In the Bronx, I learned that quiet could be dangerous. That a paused breath on the corner meant something was shifting. That prayer could sound like a curse and still reach heaven. Trouble taught me to make a home out of almost – almost free, almost safe, almost seen. It taught me that some people inherit peace, and some of us inherit the labor of inventing it. There’s a version of me in another timeline who chose silence. She’s still waiting for permission to exist. I think of her when the moon hangs low like a question no one wants to answer. I pour her a drink and tell her that trouble is holy if you let it soften you. That there’s a light that only flickers after everything else burns out. When I finally rest, I don’t dream of being clean. I dream of being forgiven. I dream of trouble turning into language, and language turning into home.

Joely Williams is a Columbia, South Carolina-based writer whose work explores memory, survival, and identity across poetry and nonfiction. Her writing also examines how family, cityscapes, and culture shape resilience. Author of Put the Phone Down, We Have a Job to Do, she crafts, collages, and collects books in her free time.