To write a graduation poem Is to write a COVID poem A poem I never wanted to write A lamentation to quarantines Face masks And ever-changing regulations A social deterministic determination of my career in undergrad Wouldn’t it just be sad To let one silly bug trump your whole plan? Let it get in the way of your happiness Strip you of your agency Because I couldn’t do this since December of 2019 Yes, here. Stand and speak words into a microphone Shake and squeeze all the muscles so y’all don’t see The way I’m shaking like a leaf While I stutter And scream and rant And yet, I let it kill me. We let this virus maim us As we attempted to adapt To see the world without an eye Claw our way to the finish line With online classes And zero social interaction. No, I never wanted pity For the move I made, the decision to step beyond my hometown borders Because there has always been a choice. It was a choice to continue school When it felt like the world was suffocating me from the inside out When we were battered and exhausted from long work hours And dorm pod quarantines And a ‘return to normalcy’ How could we return to ‘normal’ When we hardly remembered what normal was Hardly remembered what we were like before this anxiety Grabbed hold of our guts When eyes grew wide And flashed around At every person without a mask Or at every judgmental glance. But we had a choice. We had a choice when the campus closed When we packed and left for who knew how long We had a choice to return To still make connections And take in the newly metamorphized scene. Graduating still doesn’t feel real. It feels like something I watch as a movie scene, Just as I glance at every face in this crowd and I know so many people. People I had never met two years ago Professors that never knew I existed before they saw my name on a roster We each have those people We chose to talk to, To connect to, To wrap them in our web of found family to drag them with us as we fall through life Tripping And running And dancing As if we’ve got all the time. But it’s here. This moment Three years after I first enrolled in college I did not want this to be a COVID poem But a poem that touched each one of you As we fell through life together Wherever we connected In the classroom Or beyond Maybe I’ll meet you for real after Once we’ve crossed the finish line Run into each other in a Starbucks, Remember the other’s name And hold that infant connection Begging it not to die As this day becomes a memory Of all the years we’ve had And all the year’s taken away By the virus That we let kill us Just a little As we survive with this stroke In our brains And move on As a war is being waged And we sit here. Smiling. Crying— I’ll cry at least a little For every interaction I’ve been blessed with And the subtraction of each soul from my daily life When we cross the stage and bridge our lives When we cross to the Next stage, Or chapter if you prefer the book metaphor Where we think of things as Before and After Just remember this is not an End. Because graduating is sometimes sad This unspeakable Happy, vibrant sadness That tinges memories with a sepia haze Dashing everything with a sprinkling of nostalgia Wishing for the ‘Good ‘ol Days.’ But this graduation poem And COVID poem Intertwined into one Is a hello and a goodbye To the life we’ve had And the one that’s just begun. So please don’t let this virus This bug Or this war Turn you inside out Kill you slowly Or violently like ant poison Because you’re a soul we cannot live without. Your smile Deserves to be genuine And every tear you cry Is for the good times and the worse times Until the day we all die. To the class of 2022 To the class I only just knew For this moment We hold in our web Where we fell through life together For where our chapters end Make someone here—your neighbor, your brother, A recurring character Because in two and a half years deprived of social interaction And mental detraction We know how important it is to hold onto one another And never let them go.
