The Year the Concrete Bloomed

The Year the Concrete Bloomed

For two hundred years the people of Bunker Seven did not know what the color green was.

The old books and papers talked about grass and leaves and trees.. The kids in Bunker Seven thought these were just stories. They lived in a world that was all gray walls, gray ceilings and air that did not smell like anything.

Kael was seventeen years old when he found a crack in the wall.

He found it in a part of the bunker that nobody used anymore. This part of the bunker had not been used since the air filters broke down in 1989. Kael had gone there to be alone because he was very sad. His mother had died three months ago. His father had not spoken a word since then. In Bunker Seven people did not show their feelings. They kept everything inside like the air.

The crack in the wall was something new.

It was very small like a hair. It was on the floor where two big slabs of concrete met.. Inside the crack Kael saw something that he could not believe.

There was a thread of green color.

Kael got down on his knees. He touched the thread. It was soft and a little wet. He had never seen anything like it before. It was so delicate and alive.

Kael did not tell anyone about the crack. This might have been a mistake.. Maybe it was a good thing.

Every day Kael went back to the crack.. Every day the green thread grew a little bit. It became a stem then a leaf, then a few leaves. The leaves pushed against the concrete and the concrete started to break. The crack got a little bigger.

After ten days a small bud formed. It was tight and small like the color of the walls at night.

Kael talked to the bud. He told it about his mother, how she used to hum when she worked and how she said that the world outside the bunker was not really dead. He told the bud about his father, who just stared at the walls and did not talk.

The bud did not do anything. It just waited.

On the day Kael took his father to see the crack.

His father said, "You are not feeling well. The doctors said you need to rest."

Kael said, " look at this."

They stood in front of the crack. The bud had grown a bit overnight. It was moving slightly like it was breathing.

His father did not say anything for a time. Then he said, "What is this thing?"

Kael said, "I do not know.. I think it is going to open up."

They waited together Kael and his father in the quiet of the bunker watching the small bud get ready to bloom.

The flower started to bloom at midnight.

Kael had fallen asleep on his fathers shoulder. When he woke up the corridor was not gray anymore.

The flower had opened up slowly like a memory coming back after a time. Its petals were the color of the sky before the war. They were the color of his mothers dress. They were the color of hope.

The amazing thing was not the flower.

It was the light. The petals were shining, softly at first, brighter and brighter. The whole corridor was filled with a light that Kael had never felt before. The light touched the walls. The walls started to remember. There were pictures of vines and leaves and flowers on the walls painted by someone who had not forgotten the color green.

Kaels father cried.

He said, "I told your mother that the world outside was dead. I told her that it would never be green again."

Kael took his fathers hand. Said, "She knew that it was not dead."

The flower kept shining for three days. By then many people from the bunker had come to see it. They brought their kids and their sadness and their small hopes. They sat in the light. Remembered how to feel things.

Kaels father started talking. He talked about the flower, about Kaels mother and then about the old days when the world was full of green.

The flower eventually stopped shining. Its petals fell off.. The crack in the wall was still there a little bigger now deep enough to plant something new.

Kael collected the seeds from the flower. There were hundreds of them like dust, warm, like breath.

He smiled.

The concrete had not won. It had just been waiting for something to break through it.