Brenda Juarez
They tell me,
go back to where you came from.
But my roots don’t stay put.
They slip under cities, under fences,
sliding through the dark.
My ancestors whisper underground,
soft as spores. They bloom in the flowers that carry my face,
in the words I keep saying.
Still I grow,
small, stubborn, alive.
A Honey Fungus creeping through silence,
turning decay into life,
turning every broken word into roots.
They call me foreign, but the soil knows my name.
I am the network beneath their feet,
the pulse under their polished ground.
I am the bridge between rot and bloom,
the endless, quiet force that will not be erased.