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.
