The densest despair takes Us to no ordinary joy. Sometimes diving Into the deep inside us Is the only way We rise above it. - Amanda Gorman

& what we share is the bark, the bones. Paleontologists, from one fossilized femur, Can dream up a species, Make believe a body Where there was none. Our remnants are revelation, Our requiem as raptus. When we bend into dirt We’re truth preserved Without our skin.

So while once we asked: How could we possibly prevail
over catastrophe?
Now we assert: How could catastrophe possibly prevail
over us?

We will not be slowed, come the loads, roadblocks, hills that may.

We’ll keep fulfilling this path

Until the world goes still to say:

Where there’s will, there’s women

And where there’s women

There is always a way.