Thank you for open roads and late-night drives.

Thank you for the summer sun and winter snow.

Thank you for fireworks and carnivals,

For funnel cake, cotton candy, and hot cocoa.

Thank you for libraries and playgrounds and open fields.

Thank you for my big brother's soccer games.

Thank you for making the sidelines stretch

As tall and wide as my wildest dreams.

Thank you for elementary school where I learned to sing

And for middle school where I learned to dance.

Thank you for high school where I learned to love

Making art, telling stories and taking a chance.

Thank you for a family in all its many forms,

Whether from the comfort of home or the mystery of somewhere else.

Thank you for togetherness, solidarity and shoulders to cry on

And for not leaving me alone, all by myself.

Thank you for my very best friends, my rock, my people,

But most importantly, the sisters I never had.

Thank you for the countless memories,

All the good and all the bad.

Thank you for the drummer girl who changed my life,

The girl who shared her art with me.

Thank you so much for sending her my way

So she could show me all that I could be.

Thank you for the endless FaceTime calls

Even though we saw each other all day.

I guess seven hours at school was never enough

To tell her everything I ever wanted to say.

Thank you for the sunshine girl

Who gave me everything I would ever need.

Thank you to her for learning and growing with me

And for making our trio complete.

Thank you for long-distance friendships for testing our strength.

Thank you for the highways that run between us.

Thank you for phones calls turning miles into inches.

I guess seven hours at school was never enough.

Thank you for giving me a place to learn, to grow,

To cry, to laugh, to play.

A place to catch butterflies

And watch them fly away.

Thank you for changing and staying the same.

Thank you for growing but remaining small.

Thank you for revealing all your hidden gems to me

Before I left and missed them all.

Thank you for feeling limitless yet grounded.

Thank you for being my whole world yet just the start.

Thank you for letting me go when it was time,

And yet keeping hold of my heart.

When I return to you, it feels like I never left.

There are new roads, new people and buildings have been knocked down,

But I see so much of my childhood

Every time I look around.

I see so much of what made me who I am,

The wonderfully imperfect person before you.

There is absolutely no one in this world quite like her.

So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you for the strength I hold,

For the love that I feel,

For the depths of my mind,

And the wounds that you heal.

Above all else, however, thank you for the exposition

To the greatest story there will ever be.

A story of fortitude, prosperity and forgiveness—

The story of me.