Tenacity of Weeds

by Kathryn Kulpa

Have you ever noticed the grass that grows in the cracks on the highway? Maybe it’s on the soft shoulder, the breakdown lane, the verge. Maybe it’s on the median strip. Maybe it’s on the old exit spur, no longer used. It’s not pretty spring grass. It’s brown December grass, and if drivers notice it at all they just wonder if the highway’s being kept up, but mostly they don’t notice because they are listening to directions or sneaking glances at a text on their phones or worrying about being late and losing the jobs they hate but can’t quit because they would lose their healthcare, because they live in America and their lives mean less than the scraggly-ass grass that grows where nobody planted it. It’s not a flower or a topiary or a heritage tree. Maybe it’s an invasive species, like Japanese stiltgrass or pepperweed, and if the highway department notices those unruly spikes breaking through asphalt they only want to poison it, but the grass mowed down in their weekly Roundup finds its way past poured concrete to re-cover the earth. It’s here, and it grows, and it doesn’t care if you don’t think it should be here.

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KATHRYN KULPA lives in New England. Sometimes she writes poems on the side of the road. She would stay up all night reading if you let her. Find her writing in Best Microfiction, Flash Frontier, Ghost Parachute, Hot Flash Literary Review, trampset, and at kathrynkulpa.com.

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