She stumbled along the cracked sidewalk
sorrow filling the cement crevices under her feet.
Elfin chin, held downward with the weight of life’s pain,
forced tearful eyes to the uneven path along the street.

She followed the fissures before her, mapping her life
in the trails running helter-skelter through the pavement.
Desperation, a constant acerbic companion, mocked her,
bitterly echoing the choices that led to this enslavement.

Bereft, she struggled, one foot in front of the other,
trying to remember the joy that once was her retreat --
when, like an oasis in the barren gray, a delicate flower,
white, tinged with pink, thrust through the concrete.

The blossom beckoned; soft, yet strong,
unrelenting in its fight for life, it called to her soul.
In the midst of pain, of desolation, it said,
life finds a way to bring beauty to the whole.

The burdens continued to weight her as she
began her travels anew along that broken ground,
but the prayer of hope that bloomed, white, tinged with pink,
provided solace and comfort profound.