POEM: When You Have Read This Letter

by Steve Babb, written for the men in Stewart Detention Center during the COVID-19 pandemic

When you have read this letter, wash your hands

Lest you’re infected by this contraband

Of smuggled tidings from a bitter man.

When you have read this letter, burn this page

Let flame consume my words of hopeless rage

As we’re consumed by fever in this cage.

When you have read this letter, picture me:

A haunted shade is all there’s left to see

Of the ebullient soul I used to be.

When you receive this, I may well be dead,

Confined to segregation, or to bed,

Each day more distant from the life I led.

When you have read this letter, speak the names

Of all the men here, rounded up, detained,

In quarantine, at risk, and not to blame.

When you have read this letter, say a prayer

Lest we who’re locked up in the lion’s lair

Without a key, should give way to despair.

When you have read this letter, wash your hands,

But not of us; you have to understand:

Our deaths weren’t natural; you can’t forget

What happened here; tell mother I regret

That I was so naïve and desperate

As to place faith in such a faithless land.

Steve Babb is a volunteer at El Refugio, a ministry of hospitality and visitation serving immigrants at Stewart Detention Center and their families and friends.