Dear babies, my sweet little ones.

Listen.

Children, when I tell you to pray, remember that even though your head may not be bowed.

Your words will always be heard.

You my sweet babies are not to be forgotten.

You are the essence of something left naïve – a lollipop unlicked,

A savory bit of flesh that no tongue so sweet could ever reach.

Listen, my children. Listen when I tell you that your lungs gasp with such magnificence.

The world may have changed direction of its orbit when you took your first and finest breaths.

Believe me, my babies. When I tell you that this world is cruel.

You may get torn up and worn down and sanded into bits of dust.

Believe me – because I know how tough it is.

Your Mama has been through the depths of hell and back.

Cultivated by malnourished hallucinations and the bitter aftertaste of a dirty disaster that leads me into a scalding shower.

Your Mama has been back and forth, between loss and hope, freedom and rejection.

Listen, sweet babies.

Listen when no on is speaking.

Because often times the silence preaches louder than the sermon.

Listen to the wind in you hands, and the snow that sleeps upon your lashes,

To the flames that bury forests and manipulates them unidentifiable.

My sweet children, listen.

Even when your cells swell from an isotope of neutron contamination,

You are my only – still and wonderful.

Your wing span may fall too short to lift you off this earth,

But listen,

My dear babies,

Because you will soar.