It will be a blessing if our children Never fully grasp what It took to come to this. Grant them this poem If they do forget it. If they do, forget i… - Amanda Gorman

The closest we get to time travel Is our fears softening,

We wrap our arms around ourselves, as if we can possibly hold the whole of who we are within us — everything that makes us this unearthly speck we are. Perhaps tomorrow cannot wait to be today.

In this one life, we, like our joy, are fleeting but certain, abstract & absolute, ghosts who glow & glow.

We are striving to forge our union with purpose. To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and conditions of man. And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us. We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside. We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another. We seek harm to none and harmony for all. Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true. That even as we grieved, we grew. That even as we hurt, we hoped. That even as we tired, we tried that will forever be tied together victorious. Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division.