Matthew R. Callies

A June That Refused to Stay Quiet

That night the street remembered how to speak,

when silence cracked beneath a flashing light,

and voices rose from corners once too weak,

to claim the dark and turn it into right.

 

No permission signed the air that night,

no rule could keep identity confined,

the city’s polished story lost its height,

as names refused the cages they were assigned.

 

A door once shut became a line of fire,

not flame of ruin, but of being seen,

and every step grew louder, lifted higher,

as history shifted what it might have been.

 

Now June still carries echoes through the street,

where defiance and survival meet.