Little girl, where did you go?

2. With your pinned-back baby hairs
3. and your untouched eyes, clear from the smudges of life. 

4. Where’d you go?

5. Did you run off and hide the first time daddy threw a beer bottle against the wall?

6. Was it the noises, the smash of glass against drywall, the shriek you didn’t recognize until you closed your own mouth? 

7. Little girl, are you hiding? 
Please stop hiding. 

8. Little girl tell me, did your mothers cigarette smoke fog your view of happiness ? 

9. Did the ashes coat your eyelashes so thick that all you could see was darkness?
10. Tell me, little girl, are you afraid of the dark?

11. Or was it the night you watched your father fall out of love?

12. With mom, with you,
with life?

13. Little girl, tell me, did you fill a balloon with your insecurities?

14. Did you tie around your wrists a little too tight and it’s been awhile since you’ve even tried taking it off? 

15. Are the marks on your arms from nights when it got a little too windy, and you were a little too high up? 

16. Little girl, how did it feel to be caught in a storm?

17. Are you still up there darling?

18. Are you ever coming down?
Little girl please come down.

19. Baby girl, let me tie rocks to your ankles, place pillows where you’ll land, will you let me catch you?

20. Darling please let me catch you.