No one really gets to say.

At 22 I am the inaugural poet.

We've learned that quiet isn't always peace in the norms and notions of what just is isn't always just ISS on the Wednesday in which we saw the insurrection and at the Capitol, that was the day that the oh, I'm really came to life and I really put pedal to the metal.

We've seen a forest that would shatter or nation rather than share.

It would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy, and this effort very nearly succeeded.

But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it could never be permanently defeated.

I wanted it to be a message of hope and unity, and I think that Wednesday for me really just underscored how much that was needed but to not turn a blind eye to the cracks that really need to be filled.

But one thing is certain.

If emerge mercy with might and might with right then, love becomes our legacy in change.

Our Children's birthright.

Poetry is a weapon.

It is an instrument of social change, and poetry is one of the most political arts out there because it demands that you rupture and destabilize the language in which you're working with inherently, you are pushing against the status quo.

And so for me it's always existed in that tradition of truth telling.

For there was always light if Onley were brave enough to see it if Onley were brave enough to be in.