Cracks in the Concrete
by Azariah Zai
There’s a tree that grows in a small patch of concrete --- roots twisted and toughened under the weight of neglect and the indifference of passersby. That tree is our resilience, our survival, and yet, a survival alone cannot be mistaken for freedom. This tree, like so many of us, has grown in the cracks, sculpting its own life out of what little space was left by those who paved over it. In America, the soil was never meant for us to bloom; to was never intended for our nourishment or our shade.
To be black in this country is to be both the tree and the artist carving in defiance of a world that demands conformity. A black person moving through America’s structures feels, in every way of their being, the weight of its rigidity, how it pins down the roots, determines the growth, and places a cap on the reach of our branches. This country’s foundations were set with rules that seemed determined to box in, to strip way the freedom, and to redefine what it is meant to be alive. There’s only so much we can do with cracks in the concrete; sooner or later, the question must shift from survival to transformation.
America, you see, was built like a locked room. The walls were not designed to protect or shelter; they were designed to contain. To tear down this room is not an act of violence, but a necessary clearing --- a chance to breathe in open air, to create and think beyond walls. Imagine trying to paint a mural on walls that someone else has scribbled over with hate, a space where every stroke is restricted by the boundaries they set long ago. We can repaint it a thousand times, but the wall’s purpose remains unchanged. We have to let it fall.
But to destroy does not meant to discard; it is, instead, an invitation to rebuild with intention. What if we built a system like a garden, tended by all, where the soil is rich with compassion, real equality, and equity, and the sun reaches every single plant? What if each individual was free to grow tall and bright, every color and form valued in its own beauty? A world designed with creativity at its center --- a world that nurtures thinkers and dreamers, that respects and honors the visions of those who walk the world differently.
For too long, this nation has made us craftmen of adaptation. We’ve been forced to bend in ways unnatural to our souls, mastering the art of survival while waiting for freedom to arrive like rain. But rain alone does not make a garden; intention does. A garden cannot bloom in a cage, just as liberation cannot grow in the skeleton of oppression. We need more than rain; we need to redesign the entire landscape.
Imagine a world where education is a wellspring, flowing to everyone. Where the air we breathe --- education, opportunity, health --- is not a privilege but the right of every human being. In such a world, a child’s potential would be unbound by zip codes, skin tones, and orientations. Each person’s spirit would be free to wander, to explore, and to create as they are, not as someone else demands them to be. When we create such a system, comfort becomes a forest, vast and uncontainable.
We are not only asking for equality and equity, but for the power to craft a new existence, to be more than survivors --- we are demanding to be fully alive. The system as it stands cannot accommodate this vision. It must be dismantled, like the walls around a garden finally removed to let in sunlight from every direction. This transformation requires the work of every hand willing to join. In tearing down, we do not fall into emptiness; we open ourselves to possibility. We become architects, each voice a blueprint, each life a design. Only by breaking free from this locked room can we, as James Baldwin would say, “make America what America must become.”
Let us build it. And this time, let it be place where trees grow wild and free, where every part of Earth holds potential, and where the light, at last, reaches us all.
signing out,
abirdthatswims
