Flower
Flower Once, in the thin crack between a sidewalk and a brick wall, a flower decided to exist. No one planted it. No one noticed it at first. The city hurried past with its shoes and horns and tired thoughts, and the crack stayed a crack—dark, dry, overlooked. But the flower pushed anyway. It had no grand plan. It just leaned toward the idea of light. Rain came rarely, but when it did, the flower drank like it was listening to a secret. Sunlight slipped down the wall in narrow hours, and the flower learned to bloom quickly, brightly, without apology. Yellow, maybe. Or the kind of purple that looks brave on purpose. People began to notice. A kid stopped stepping on that spot. Someone took a photo. One morning, a person having a truly awful day paused, just for a second, because the flower was there, doing something small and impossible. The flower didn’t know it mattered. It just kept blooming until it couldn’t anymore. And long after it wilted, the crack was still there—but someh...