Letter to Baby Red

A free-verse poem of love to any little one out there who lives in a loveless environment

Because I don’t know you, but I know you exist. Because I see the monsters in the hallways, and I know you need love more than I need life.

Dear Baby Red,

If the bud of my breath could glimpse a taste of your first follicle I’d snip it off like the tiniest tip of tongue

I’d anesthetize its pinched vowels unless the growth is as numb as your deadest limb.

I’d risk to run dry until frost might seal my womb, or to consume the rust bleach that laces your hair, If a parcel of your fingertip might notice a warmth before you’ve cooled. If ladybug’s nail before crushed, might see the shadow of careful scissors.

Your cradle is falling, and it’s called fun and games But if the window’s shards won’t build upon me a higher ground for your rocking,

let any piece of bark or leaf that stems me whole break off to your hatching eyes,

That one day older, you will have touched love.

~A poem written by Chloe Paulina Hawes