"Ornamental Until We Rise"

10x10 acrylic mixed-media on canvas They told us to be flowers, soft, ornamental, harmless. But they forgot that even blooms have centers and centers have power. Our heads, once meant to be pistils, the part that receives life have been recast as pistols, targets and weapons in a world that mistakes vulnerability for danger. We grow in a landscape glitching between what is real and what is imposed, a matrix of laws, noise, voices telling us who we are allowed to be. Our torsos are stems. We bend. We carry history in our bodies. We anchor into soil we did not choose. Yet we rise, petal by petal. This garden is not a dream. It is a reckoning. We are done being ornamental. We are done being silent. Blooming is resistance.