Is it not interesting, the way a single daisy grows through a crack in the sidewalk?

Layer upon layer of cement and sweat and exertion were

Smoothed into place there and were never meant to be disturbed my man’s efforts.

Yet, it is all undone by a delicate white flower.

I grew the same way;

Under the oppression of generations of pain

Solidified into a man and a woman.

I toiled under poisonous fumes and weight that I carried like a concrete slab

On my shoulders;

In my heart.

These are places, in which flowers and children are not meant to grow,

Yet somehow they thrive on nothing more than their own

Free

Will.

We thrive because we endure.

We cast the ugliness from our lives as an archer casts an arrow from her bowstring:

With strength,

Grace,

And purpose.

We are the unlucky and incredible few who can stare into the unseeing and cold eyes

Of a concrete sidewalk

And say

No.

You will not suppress me.

I am the daisy growing through the crack in your unbreakable mechanism.

My hands are small, but they are righteous and true

And I will scrape away the walls in my mind that have long been coated

With your desperate perversion

And the salty sheen of my shame.

I will wrench the ceiling off of my dismal sepulcher,

Throw my face into the warmth of daylight,

And breathe the air that you deprived me of.

Flowers, like humans, are ephemeral in nature.

We are, all of us, ever-changing,

We are roses blooming brightly and brilliantly before casting off our vibrant robes

For the brittle coat of winter.

We are poppies swaying and serenely unperturbed by all,

Save for a change in the direction of the warm summer wind.

We are daisies, white and plain as day, though more complex

To those who see us for what we are.

We grow through cracks in sidewalks.

We endure.