Where the Sections Meet

My shoe caught the raised edge

where two pours of concrete

met and didn't quite agree.

I grabbed the post. My palm

scrapped the warm metal—

rust dust and my own skin.

The crack ran between the sections

wide enough to see inside:

soil, dark, and a weed

pushing through with three purple flowers.

I've walked this street four hundred times.

Never saw it before.

My hand was bleeding a little.

I wiped it on my jeans.

The concrete was crumbling

at the exact seam where

two different batches

had been forced together.

One had given up.