Home2023 YI Contest - Nadiya White

Annual Youth Initiative contest

My Hope. My Vote. My Future.

My grandma once told me,
"Your voice is so powerful,
You can make people stop
And listen."

How impressive is my rhetorician.

My professor once told me,
"God surely gave you
The power
In the pen."

How heaven sent I am then,

To create imagery on paper
And bring it to life by chant -

To develop a crowd
By developing a sentence,
To build a nation
By building paragraphs.

Seems familiar?

I hope so.

I'm told I sound like
Amanda Gorman
When I want people to get up
And rise;

That I sound like a King
When I strive
To do more
Than dream.

Sometimes I hear I'm Childish
Like Gambino denouncing This as America,
Because this country is so perfect,
In no need of change;

That if I don't like it,
I can go back to Africa.

I hear I lament
Like Lamar
When black people
Die in the street.

Sometimes my words are as dark as coal
Like when J. Cole
Described the morbid irony in
'Be Free.'

So you've heard my voice before,
You've seen the work of my pen -

In different tones,
Different handwriting,
All from a different face.

But the feeling is all the same.

I just hope you were always listening.

Not just in a speech,
Or rap,
Or poem,

But in a booth deciding my future.

My hope
Is that my vote
Is as powerful as my voice,
As moving as my pen,

So damn life altering
These words go beyond the page.

I hope we rise,
Make our dreams reality,
Never subject ourselves to This
As America.

I hope to never lament
Another black soul in the street.
I hope to break from the bitter irony
Of being free.

I 'hope' that isn't just an empty word.

So when I speak
And make you stop,
When my pen
Is radiating power,

I hope you're listening
As I decide
My future.