Writing, truth-telling to one another, is an act of hope-making when hope is hardest found. - Amanda Gorman

Some distances, if allowed to grow,
Are merely the greatest proximities.

When day comes, we ask ourselves:
Where can we find light
In this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry, a sea we must wade.
We braved the belly of the beast,
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace,
And the norms and notions of what ‘just is’
Isn’t always justice.
And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it,
Somehow, we do it.
Somehow, we’ve weathered and witnessed
A nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.
We, the successors of a country and a time
where a skinny Black girl, descended from slaves
and raised by a single mother,
can dream of becoming president
only to find herself reciting for one.

Of all the stars the most beautiful
Is nothing more than a monster,
Just as starved & stranded as we are.