A Weed Grown from Concrete

I won’t ever understand the subtleties of a “rose in Harlem.”

I grew up a St. Louis weed.

All our roses have come and gone

Maya Angelou, her voice carries a St. Louis song.

Words spoken to be held in the heart of a St. Louis weed.

Powerful sentiments made into psalms.

A hopeful weed, sprouting, luckily unplucked

pushing through south city’s muck.

A city I have grown to love,

one that tests you with hardships and cruelty.

Nearly ripped from the dirt and stomped into the mud.

Quiet indignities to call a hopeful’s bluff.

A rose, to be a rose is a luxury unknown to a weed.

Grown from poverty, and a polluted seed.

Grown because and not to be.

Weeds will face their fair share of inequality.

But I grow anyway, straight from my south city street, the buildings I learned as I sprang from concrete-

They don’t look the same, they’ve shifted  and changed.

But the memories remain the same.

Maybe I’ll become a rose, if a weed can bloom that way