Justice Will Only Come From the Streets

Justice isn’t granted; it’s seized, a raw and relentless thing scraped from under nails, scratched from the walls of jails.

Justice doesn’t wait on the polished,

in rooms scented with musk and leather

where words circle like tired hawks,

where hands are too clean to know.

No, justice rises from the cracks,

where soles slap against broken asphalt,

where spit and grit baptize the air,

where the ones who’ve lost

everything but voice

breathe out their last, refusing to be still.

It’s the fists that rise at dawn,

the murmur thick in the alleys,

the thunder of bodies woven tight—

an unbroken vow stitched together

from torn rags, blood, the laughter

of those who will not bend.

Justice isn’t granted; it’s seized,

a raw and relentless thing

scraped from under nails,

scratched from the walls of jails.

It lives there—between sweat and dust,

on the street, where they all thought

we’d fold.

But we are still here,

and the earth remembers,

the steps carved into her bones,

the roar of all those lives claimed

by a system built to erase,

but still, we rise, staining the pavement

with prayers no courtroom could hold,

with songs no judge could understand.

Justice is not a thing to be granted—

it’s the fire fed by those cast out,

a rage that doesn’t end in their silence.

It smolders in the street’s deep veins,

a pulse that beats against every false peace,

each empty promise they place in our mouths

like stale bread we refuse to chew.

We are the ones who will remember,

the ghosts of those who walked before,

whose breaths linger in alleyways,

in the sighs of the wind through barred windows,

and justice will come from us,

only us, with our raw hands and broken teeth,

unafraid of the fight, unafraid of the blood

it will take to make them see

that truth—real truth—cannot be bought or caged,

it bleeds from the streets

and calls our names like thunder.