Kano.
Your name means promise.
And tonight, under this sky,
your mother makes one.
I vow that we will live.

We will not trade our days for dust.
We will not bow to a world
that forgets the taste of rain
or the voice of the wind.

We will feel the grass between our toes,
and let the earth’s heartbeat guide our own.
We will plant food with our hands
and eat it warm from the sun.
We will drink water that remembers
its journey through stone and root.

We will wear our hair as it grows from our souls,
no mask, no shame, no weight that isn’t ours.
We will dance to music that shakes our bones,
and laugh until the stars lean in to listen.

We will love so fiercely
that no shadow can survive in its light.
Kano, I vow to raise you in truth,
that you are enough,
not because of what you earn,
but because you are.

I vow that when you look at the world,
you will see beauty first,
and when you see pain,
you will answer with kindness and courage.

And when our time here is done,
we will leave with hearts full,
hands warm from holding each other,
and the joy of knowing
we kept our vow.
We lived. We relied on each other🤍