Congratulations

Your Graduation

Though it is your graduation,
it feels like mine as well.
Following you,I graduate too.

I graduate from the frozen roads
I drove again and again,
from every journey
that carried you in the car.
Will we manage?
Can you really keep going?
Even with my hands on the wheel,
my heart was restless.

Moments of coaxing and comforting
quietly piled up over time.
Standing in front of the school,
summer, winter, and autumn passed.

As often as you came and went,
swinging after school,
so did the seasons.

The friends who welcomed you,
the teachers who waited and endured—
they, too,walked toward you,
just as much as I did.

After three hundred and sixty-five days,
passed six times over,
a day like this has finally arrived.

I was the one who was afraid
when you first entered school.
Now, at your graduation,
tears fall.

I entered with you,
and I graduate with you.
Congratulations.

To the road where you cried often
and laughed just as much.
To your journey to and from school—
today,
I celebrate it to me.