A Red Hood

Editor's note: depicts dark themes.

by Jenny Morelli

Dear Little Red, 

I understand now why you wore a hood tugged low around your head. It was to buffer your fears. I understand now why it was red. It flared with your heartbreak and despair. The edges were equally frayed from the depth of your rage.  

This was your life, your grim tale to tell, a tale that began on a snowy night when a fur-cloaked shadow howled with hunger into the wind, desperate to survive. When you approached, bearing meat from your basket, the wolf chewed and swallowed, lay her head in your lap with warmth and gratitude and a love you never knew.  

Then a crack split the snow-muffled silence and your lap grew warm with her blood-red-hooded eyes as the Huntsman ran to save you, to pull you free from the monster, but you didn’t need saving, so you shoved him away as tears drenched your fevered, red-raged cheeks.  

You ran and you ran along the beast’s beaten path to where her cowering litter lay huddled tight and you covered them all with your red-hooded cape. You lowered your frayed hood against the winds, against the savages and lived your life with a newfound purpose, with a confound hope, with a profound love. 

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JENNY MORELLI is a NJ high school English teacher who lives with her husband, cat, and myriad yard pets. She’s published in several literary magazines including  Spillwords and Red Rose Thorns, and has four poetry chapbooks with Bottlecap Press. Visit her website: JennyMorelliWrites.com 

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