by Lizzie Nova

If your tears were raindrops and you were a seed, 

what would you grow? 

Would it amplify the misery 

or something more worth the sow? 

If I am the seedling of someone else’s sadness 

and trauma were my roots, 

I hope I’ll flower something beautiful. 

I hope I’ll be the magnolia of my city, 

project and plant, 

below the sea,

succeeding in not suffocating 

from the air of my history. 

In the places of arms, 

as bouquets 

ripped from their mothers

smothered and covered by

the sweet dust of beignets and 

the breeze of what has come over the river 

for which we must not speak.

I see the magnolia of my city, 

project and plant.

They never uproot the flowers, 

just chop them down, 

pave it over 

til the land is void of color, 

lifeless, 

flat. 

I heard they tried to silence a magnolia 

but I still hear her sing through concrete cracks 

about pleasure and liberation 

in a gumbo of corruption and untimely death.

If my tears could be raindrops, 

I hope that, in some way,

they contained an ounce of joy that could 

penetrate through the pavement and 

pull plant and project from the void.