N
D
E
R
Ink-streaked skies
The city hums in hushed rhythms
Rain softening the edges
Of a world that turns away
She moves
Through the quiet
Steps slowed by the damp
A shopping cart creaking beside her—
Vessel of fragments
Blankets that shield from the cold
Tins wrapped tight in old newspaper
Scraps of a life
Once lived by someone else
Her tent waits by the bridge
Patched with hope
Threadbare with fatigue
She turns down an alley
Behind the florist’s shop
Where refuse sprawls
Around overstuffed garbage cans
Among the littered remnants of discarded days
She spies it—
A rose
Petals wilted
Edges brown
But still, in the heart
Of the bloom
There is red
It clings—
To its color
Its scent
Its story
She reaches out
Fingers rough and trembling
Lifting the flower from the trash
Careful, as though it might break
Under the weight of the world
A flower tossed aside
Forgotten
She cradles it close
As if to say, I see you
I know what it is to be left behind
She tucks it into her cart
Nestles it among her treasures
Its modest beauty sparking a flame
Deep in the hollow of her chest
And as she walks back
Toward her tent beneath the bridge
The evening softens around her
And the rose reminds her—
Even in this world's darkest corners
Life refuses to fade
And she, too
Will keep blooming
