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

Somehow, we’ve weathered and witnessed A nation that isn’t broken, but simply
unfinished.

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 thin.
How could we not be altered.

We forget this immensity, it will still be ours, for we wrote such mysteries down: we did the thing others dared not. We collected all the dazzling & dangerous & dreamed aches, scrapped them, though we did not yet have words by which to map them.