I still feel a little shook, even as the days spiral away from the Biden inauguration and it feels like our government has established a center of gravity again. But the signs of not-normal remain in Washington, particularly at the Capitol, which is surrounded by a steel fence that’s topped with razor wire. The Capitol police chief wants a fence around the complex permanently — part of the continued prison-ization of key government buildings that has gone on through most of my time here.

When I first moved to DC, you could drive right by the front of the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue. Then a guy sprayed the West Wing front with rifle bullets, and a small plane crashed at the foot of the South Portico, and 9/11 happened…and all of the security was hardened. Pennsylvania Avenue was closed to cars between 15th and 17th. Last summer and again in the fall, that perimeter was extended northward another block to the other side of Lafayette Square, lest protesters disturb Donald Trump’s tweetstorms.

It’s a terrible trend, but fencing in the Capitol would be the worst of all. It’s the People’s House, the kind of place where you should be able to walk around, and allowing a few thousand foaming nutbags to ruin it for many millions is just wrong. I know it’s a risk; openness is always a risk. Taking the world’s most important symbol of democracy and surrounding it with high-security fencing is a risk of its own; it says that the wrong folks are winning. Let’s not let them win.

I kept my shit together today until this poet broke me.

When day comes, we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry.
A sea we must wade.
We braved the belly of the beast.
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace, and the norms and notions of what “just” is isn’t always justice.
And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it.
Somehow we do it.
Somehow we weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.
We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.
And, yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect.
We are striving to forge our union with purpose.
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and conditions of man.
And so we lift our gaze, not to what stands between us, but what stands before us.
We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside.
We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another.
We seek harm to none and harmony for all.
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true.
That even as we grieved, we grew.
That even as we hurt, we hoped.
That even as we tired, we tried.
That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious.
Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division.
Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid.
If we’re to live up to our own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made.
That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb, if only we dare.
It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit.
It’s the past we step into and how we repair it.
We’ve seen a force that would shatter our 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 can never be permanently defeated.
In this truth, in this faith we trust, for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us.
This is the era of just redemption.
We feared at its inception.
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour.
But within it we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves.
So, while once we asked, how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe, now we assert, how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?
We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be:
A country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free.
We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation, become the future.
Our blunders become their burdens.
But one thing is certain.
If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children’s birthright.
So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left.
Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one.
We will rise from the golden hills of the West.
We will rise from the windswept Northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution.
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the Midwestern states.
We will rise from the sun-baked South.
We will rebuild, reconcile, and recover.
And every known nook of our nation and every corner called our country, our people diverse and beautiful, will emerge battered and beautiful.
When day comes, we step out of the shade of flame and unafraid.
The new dawn balloons as we free it.
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.