Читать книгу Generation F - Girls Write Now - Страница 37

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When I sat down to write something for this anthology, all I could think about was apologizing to these girls for the world we’re giving them. My apology turned into a prayer.

Dear Nathalie,

(and Kiana and Cleo and all the young women I know and don’t know in Generation F),

I wanted to write you a poem.

This is not a poem.

This is an apology.

I wanted to write you a poem of hope and praise and encouragement.

Not this.

This is not what I meant to write.

This is not what I meant to say.

But it is what I have to say, right now, in 2018.

I am sorry.

“Sorry” was not the word I had planned to use

when I wrote to you.

When I wrote to you I was going to use the word

PROMISE.

I was going to say:

The future holds promise.

Go for it.

Go for it with all of your might and heart and goodness of purpose.

But might and heart and goodness of purpose—these are only a fraction of the qualities you need now.

What you need now is might—and more.

What you need now is tenacity and anger and fury and rage.

Rage for the good, rage against the bad.

Those of us who came before you, with hope and idealism, we are angry and sad and mostly we are tired.

We have lost the

fierce spirit we used to have.

Or maybe, I hope, just misplaced it.

I have, I know I have.

I don’t have the right to speak for my whole generation.

I will speak for myself:

My heart is filled with grief.

I am exhausted most of the time.

When I am not exhausted, I am frustrated, my impotence exploding into volcanic flames of fury,

bursting from me, too-hot-to-touch

erupting continuously . . .

I know, I hope, that the eruptions of fury will cool,

turning to ashes and

please, Generation F, let us hope that

from the ashes the phoenix will rise.

May there be a rebirth of hope for me, for all of us.

So this, after all, is not a poem, or an apology, but a prayer:

May there be a rebirth of hope.

Hope for a better world.

Hope for the world you will make.

May there be a rebirth of promise.

A promise that the world can be better, can be yours to

shape.

Make the world yours.

Shape it for good.

This is a prayer.

A plea.

To you.

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