PavementGardenersAndConcreteRoses

She is a rose growing in the concrete.
Eyelashes like petals burdened by morning dew
And she inhales her family’s indifference
And negligence like smog.
But you can see the suffering buried in her smile
Her sadness playing hide and seek in her dimples
And the tension in her roots.

She is a jigsaw puzzle love song
Searching for pieces in all the wrong places
To a melody of falling teardrops
And a heart breaking one too many times
For the exact same reasons when you gave him everything.
To the whispers of broken butterflies left in her stomach
With a muted chorus of her private reassurances
And a bass line of her footsteps
When she learned to move on.

But there’s something inside of her
That knows all of it is worth fighting for.

She survives on sunshine
Knowing it doesn’t come too often.
And the grey skies always find ways
To intrude on her happiness.

And when everything is dry
She lifts up her eyes to embrace the rain
So no one can tell she was crying.
Too often, her closest friend is a cold shoulder
So she packs tears and regrets in the bags underneath her eyes
Already saturated to the brim with mistakes
And leaves for a vacation she’s taken too many times.
But I never had the luxury of not caring…

On my good days
She unpacks her thoughts onto my lap like she knows
I’m the only one that will handle them with gentle fingers.

But sometimes a new day is the best she can hope for.
So she unzips her eyelids to greet the sun
And I do my best to make her laugh.
Until destiny and fate crawl into the conversation
With words that are too heavy for our tongues to say
Because we realize that they’re just not good enough
.
She treats compliments like a foreign language
And her self-esteem wilts
While her confidence
Falls faster than her respect for her father
When she thought it couldn’t get any lower.

Her thorns are turning dull
From being called to action too many times
When they act like “No.” is not an option.
The stems of her legs are getting weaker
From the weight of their judgments on her fragile frame
And she looks at me like it’s been way too long
That someone has looked at her with nothing
But sincerity and acceptance from the start.

But if everything turned dry
And the sun refused to leave its covers
I would cry just so you could drink the tears from my eyes.
And survive to see the blue skies again.
Wishing I could put you on display
So everyone can realize what you really are.

A rose…growing in the concrete