Graduate

Scottlynn Ballard, 18

Graduate.

Grad—to step.

-ation—the state or quality of

Graduation—the state of stepping into a quantitative unknown.

Dear senior,

You mispronounce unprecedence

You Phoenix from the ashes of towers that towered a nation, you

inciting change like exciting electricity, you

Generation of the first black president with a precedent

of choosing to be more than what you have been told

Taking 90s hand-me-downs and turning them into novelties

You were the first to see the phonebook become a Facebook

Take 240 character tweets into #movements

Make Ghostbusters out of Snapchat

Connect the world at your fingertips

Dear Senior,

Did you forget it was you that made the case that love wins

and won?

You teenage revolutionaries using social media ammunitions

Taking aim at establishments touting ghost manumissions

A wise man read

“Jim Crow may have flown the nest

but our streets are still covered in his feathers”

You are no longer scared of boogeymen

You are Rousseau’s best dream

Demanding government change and when they stood still

Demanding a change in government.

You wield language like a weapon,

blacksmith new ones too

How dare you think you cannot speak— don’t you know you are now your parents’ teachers in this New World?

What did you study history for

if not to learn the mistakes of the past?

We worship Revolutions and Civil Rights

Their leaders were not made in peacetime

Its past time we recognized a common theme

Leaders don’t choose what time to rise

They rise when it is time.

Dear senior,

I know no one told you that stepping into the unknown would be this scary

But what were all those years for if not to prepare you for the ones to come?

The future is not guaranteed—it is sown

It is planting seeds in a garden you never get to see

Don’t you see you are green?

We didn’t get to choose the time

But we will rise.

Like air, like sun, like sky

Like everything you see before your eyes

And the things you don’t yet too

Everything the light touches, it is yours.

Because you are forged with molten gold in your veins

Fire in your eyes

You are refined

Leaders,

it is time.