Concrete was never just a color.
It was something I noticed long before I had the words to explain why.
Growing up in Kansas City, concrete was everywhere. Streets, sidewalks, corners — it held everything. The good, the normal, and the things a child shouldn’t have to see.
I remember one day in particular.
There was a man who used to put up our Christmas lights every year. He wasn’t perfect. He struggled. He was an addict. But he was kind. The kind of kind that doesn’t ask for anything back. The kind that shows up anyway.
And one day… he didn’t.
I didn’t see it happen.
But I saw what came after.
The paramedics lifting his body from the concrete.
And I remember standing there, trying to understand how something so still… could hold something so heavy.
That moment stayed with me.
Not just because of what happened…
but because of what it taught me.
That people are more than what they go through.
That someone can be struggling… and still be good.
That life can be unfair… and still leave something meaningful behind.
When I moved to the suburbs, I thought things would be different.
Cleaner.
Safer.
Like the concrete had been reset.
And in some ways, it was.
I remember walking barefoot on it, feeling the heat rise up from the ground. It was smooth. It was new. It felt untouched.
But I learned something very quickly.
New concrete doesn’t mean new reality.
One of my classmates — someone I grew up with — moved to the suburbs too. We ended up going to high school together. Her brother went to an alternative school.
And one day, we got off the bus…
and everything was wrong.
Police cars. Fire trucks. A whole SWAT team.
And just like that, we found out her brother had been murdered.
Right there.
On that same “clean” concrete.
That’s when it clicked for me.
Pain doesn’t care about zip codes.
It doesn’t care if the concrete is cracked or brand new.
It seeps in the same way.
It settles into the crevices.
It stays.
Because it’s one thing when it’s someone like the man who hung your Christmas lights — someone who touched your life in small, quiet ways.
But it’s different when it’s your classmate’s sibling.
Someone she grew up with.
Someone she shared her whole life with.
That kind of loss doesn’t sit on the surface.
It sinks.
And I realized something else too…
You rarely see the moment it happens.
You see the aftermath.
You see when they don’t make it.
You see when the scene has already shifted from saving… to cleaning.
So I stopped believing that one place was safer than another.
Because concrete is concrete.
It holds what happens on top of it — no matter where it is.
And still… even with all of that…
I always imagined coloring it.
Even when I didn’t feel like I was allowed to.
Even when I felt like I’d be judged for it.
I carried that desire with me.
To take something that held so much pain…
and turn it into something expressive.
Something alive.
So when I became an adult…
and I built my home…
I made sure I had what I always wanted.
Clean. Smooth. Mine.
Because this time…
I wasn’t going to hold back.
I was going to create on it.
I was going to color on it.
I was going to reclaim it.
Concrete, as a shade, reflects all of that.
It has that gray base — but it’s never just gray.
There’s dimension.
There’s movement.
There’s a story underneath it.
Just like the ground I grew up on.
Just like me.
Concrete isn’t just about what’s hard.
It’s about what holds.
It’s about what carries the weight of everything placed on it —
and still remains.
And somehow…
still leaves space for something beautiful to be created on top of it.
And just like that, my passion became the concrete society kept stepping on.
Over and over again, it felt like everything around me was trying to crush what I was becoming…
like my destiny was something fragile… something disposable.
But it wasn’t.
Because even with all that pressure…
even with everything meant to break me…
I became the rose that grew from it.​
CONCRETE
