Roots in the Cracks

Ethan liked to walk home from school slowly, dragging his sneakers along the cracked sidewalks of his neighbourhood. Most kids his age rushed to play video games or shoot hoops, but Ethan found himself fascinated by the small, stubborn things he saw between the concrete slabs.

There was the patch of moss that had spread green and velvety in the shadow of a drainpipe. The dandelions that squeezed out from a seam in the pavement, their yellow heads nodding as if mocking the passing cars. The tiny maple seedling that sprouted against a chain-link fence, as though it had decided it could be a tree even here, in the land of exhaust fumes and honking horns.

He didn’t say much about it to anyone, most people didn’t notice. Adults stomped past, their minds on bills and groceries. Kids thought flowers belonged in parks or gardens. But Ethan kept watching, his curiosity tugged by each little survivor.

One Friday afternoon, his eyes landed on a peculiar sight: a vine curling up a lamppost at the corner of Ninth and Grant. It wasn’t thick or leafy, just a single green rope spiralling toward the light. He paused, backpack sagging on his shoulders.

“How’d you get up here?” he whispered.

The vine said nothing, of course, but Ethan could imagine an answer: I just kept climbing.

The next week, he noticed more. A pigeon carrying twigs into a broken vent above the laundromat. Ants building a tiny mound at the edge of a parking lot. A sunflower, tall and bright, shooting from a neglected planter box beside the bus stop.

The city wasn’t just glass and steel. It was alive. And it was trying.

One Saturday morning, Ethan borrowed his dad’s old digital camera. He began taking photos, close-ups of petals pushing through sidewalk cracks, of moss painting bricks with green, of sparrows nesting in traffic lights.

He didn’t know why he was doing it, only that the act made him feel awake, like he was part of something bigger. Each photo felt like a secret he was uncovering, proof that the world was tougher and more patient than anyone believed.

His mother glanced at the pictures one evening. “Pretty,” she said absently while stirring spaghetti sauce. “You should try taking pictures of people too.”

But Ethan wasn’t interested in people. People had houses, clothes, and grocery stores. Nature had nothing but itself, and still it thrived. That was what amazed him. One day, rain slicked the city and drove most folks indoors. Ethan walked anyway, hood pulled over his head. On the side of a graffiti-tagged wall, he found a tiny tree, no taller than his shin, growing from the seam between brick and sidewalk.

Its roots had reached into the unseen cracks, gripping whatever they could find. Its leaves, wet and trembling, gleamed like emerald glass.

Ethan crouched down, camera ready, but then he stopped. The picture would be beautiful, yes, but something told him to simply look, not capture.

“You’re gonna make it,” he whispered to the little tree. “Aren’t you?”

A bus rumbled past, drowning his words, but the tree swayed as if it understood.

Weeks turned into months, and Ethan’s collection of photographs grew. He printed them out, taping them to his bedroom wall: daisies sprouting beside litter, ivy climbing a billboard, moss softening the sharp edges of old stone. His room became a collage of quiet resilience.

At school, during art class, the teacher noticed his sketches of weeds and birds. “You’ve got an eye,” she said. “Maybe you should think about putting together a project for the art fair.”

Ethan shrugged. “It’s just plants.”

“Not just plants,” she corrected. “It’s survival. It’s beauty in unexpected places.”

The words stuck with him.

When the art fair arrived, Ethan set up his display nervously. His photos, mounted on black paper, looked small next to colourful paintings and sculptures. He overheard one kid whisper, “Why’s he showing weeds?”

But as the crowd drifted closer, something shifted. A man pointed at the shot of the lamppost vine. “I pass this corner every day, and I never saw that.”

A woman smiled at the sunflower photo. “Reminds me of when I was a kid. We used to find those everywhere.”

Even his classmates, usually unimpressed by anything, lingered longer than expected. One said, almost grudgingly, “That’s… kinda cool. Like the city’s alive or something.”
Ethan didn’t win first prize, but he didn’t care. He’d made people see. That was enough.

On his way home that evening, he passed the little tree again. It had grown taller, its leaves brushing his knee now. He grinned, the corners of his mouth tugging upward in pride.
“Keep going,” he told it. “You’re proving everyone wrong.”

For the first time, Ethan felt he understood something important, not just about nature, but about himself. That persistence, quiet and steady, could change a place. That beauty could exist anywhere, if you learned how to look.

And so, he kept walking, camera swinging at his side, ready to find the next miracle in the cracks of the concrete jungle.

By Jaya Avaaaneesh Jayamanikandan

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