(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.
SAONY CASTILLO
YEARS AS MENTEE: 1
GRADE: Sophomore
HIGH SCHOOL: High School of Art and Design
LIVES: New York, NY
MENTEE’S ANECDOTE: Sarah introduced me to new genres such as playwriting and screenwriting. She made me outlines of screenwriting stage directions on Starbucks napkins, which were both helpful and confusing. She always made me laugh. We are pretty weird and talked about the plot of the horror movie The Human Centipede for like forty-five minutes today.
SARAH CONGRESS
YEARS AS MENTOR: 1
OCCUPATION: Executive Assistant to the Deans and Faculty Services Coordinator, Columbia University School of the Arts
BORN: Alexandria, Virginia
LIVES: New York, NY
PUBLICATIONS AND RECOGNITIONS: No Knowing Where We’re Rowing, produced by the UP Theatre
MENTOR’S ANECDOTE: Saony and I quickly learned that we both have a deep love for Pretty Little Liars on ABC Family, and one day we did a TV writing prompt for an episode of our favorite show! Which was very funny and our scripts should totally be produced ASAP.
My mentor and I share a love of dark humor. We also have been trying to explore power and gender roles . . . while still having fun. I think this piece does both and I definitely had a lot of fun writing it.
A wife’s serial killer was happy as can be, now that he was free.
He did not have to hear any whining or have any fighting. He could go to a bar and look at another woman’s boobs and not get slapped across his beautiful face. ’Cause, boy, was he handsome. At least, he’d like to think so. He could also watch baseball without having the channel changed because it was “too boring.”
Over time, this happy state started to fade. He missed the whining and the fighting. Because, apparently, it is really hard to talk to people buried in your backyard! Turns out, they’re no fun. He wanted someone to change the channel because baseball is, actually, really boring. He no longer wanted to stare at another woman’s boobs because none were as good as his late wife’s . . . so this sad and depressed “widow” husband decided to go out and get himself a new wife.
And
