Some days, we just need a place where we can bleed in peace. Our only word for this is poem. - Amanda Gorman

COMPASS This year the size of a sea Sick to its stomach. Like a page, we are only legible When opened to one another. For what is a book If not foremost a body, Waiting & wanting — Yearning to be whole, Full of itself. This book is full Of ourselves. The past is one Passionate déjà vu, One scene already seen. In history’s form, we find our own faces, Recognizable but unremembered, Familiar yet forgotten. Please. Do not ask us who we are. The hardest part of grief Is giving it a name. The pain pulls us apart, Like lips about to speak. Without language nothing can live At all, let alone Beyond itself. Lost as we feel, there is no better Compass than compassion. We find ourselves not by being The most seen, but the most seeing. We watch a toddler Freewheel through warm grass, Not fleeing, just running, the way rivers do, For it is in their unfettered nature. We smile, our whole face cleared By that single dazzling thing. How could we not be altered.

We are desperate to flatten the curve. Oh, how we miss curving into each other.

We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be a country that is bruised, but whole, benevolent, but bold, fierce, and free. We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation. Our blunders become their burdens. But one thing is certain, if we merge mercy with might and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children’s birthright.