No 6: A LETTER TO THE CHILD I SOMETIMES THINK ABOUT ONE DAY MAYBE HAVING

IMAGE BY CASEY FRIEDMAN

CASEY FRIEDMAN

It’s hard to want you when it feels like everything is ending. When the ground beneath us is shaking and crumbling.
When buildings implode, and cities fall in.
When bullet shells clutter the floor of classrooms and cubbies. When you can’t close your eyes without seeing the end. Shopping mall, movie theater, nearest exit.

Where will I hide this time?
Have I learned to hold my breathing yet?
Play dead, play living, playing at bravery.
Is there enough time to send a text?
How does one say goodbye?
A prayer never saved a life.
At least that I could see.
When the inevitable is statistically too hard to outrun.
When lunch boxes and friendship bracelets are drowned in blood.
Blood that once belonged to someone.
Someone. A person. Some one in a million or a thousand or ten
years old but already so smart.
Green converse with a little heart.
Little heart—
Little heart—
Little heart.
You’d have my eyes and my smile, my nose, but not my chin.
And when you were focused you would make my little squint.
And you would be all that love within me that overwhelms.
That I don’t know where to put because it’s turning me inside out.
I would give you everything. I would give my whole life to you.
But my little fragment in this great roulette game doesn't seem like very much.
Especially when it can be taken with so little a touch. A split second and a trigger and a chorus of blood from people too young to know anything but unbridled love.
They were just watching a movie, it was just a bit of fun.
I can see you, I can feel you, I’ve met you in my dreams.
But I’m not sure I’ll ever get to know you in a world that lets classrooms of children get blown to smithereens.