What Lifts the Step

I stepped over it a week, maybe more—

pale shoot, thin as a fuse,

pressed flat against the pour

of concrete like it had nothing to lose.

This morning my shoe caught the lip

where the stair had risen just

enough. The coffee lurched but didn't tip.

I looked down at what I'd let adjust

the front step's architecture.

One blind thing, patient, dumb with need,

working the fracture

the way a grudge is just a seed

you walk across each day until

the ground itself has changed.

I could kneel. I could pull and kill

the thing. But something's rearranged

already—the concrete won't sit flat

even after.

I keep stepping over that.