Hannah Reyes Morales

The song comes alive as night draws in. Hear it curl beneath the blanket, slip between the fold of cradling arms, in rooms across the world. To an audience of children, a hidden chorus of caregivers fills the night with song. They’re singing lullabies.

We’ve been singing them for millennia. Etched with reed on a clay tablet is a Babylonian lullaby that’s more than 5000 years old. By the glow of a phone, or to the thrum of the city, lullabies still charm babies to sleep today. We inherit them, and we pass them on. We carry them across borders and we make new ones along the way. They contain the traces of those who came before us, and they will carry traces of us long after we’re gone.

Within lullabies we’ve inscribed our greatest fears, and in the same breath, our prayers, our hopes, and our reassurances.

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