Still, it lingers,
            The painful thrusts, the slaps across the face,
                   Innocence snatched from me,
              My dignity and humanity, stolen forever.

                    Weeks have passed,
            A bulge appears, on what used to be my belly,
                 I was carrying an abomination,
                   I am the source of its life.

                   Who do I tell, he was my love,
                   The heavens are not listening,
                   My family is disgusted at me,
                  Cascades of tears do I shed daily.

                    The memories remain,
                    A cross I never wanted,
                    I am one of many girls,
             Girls with rented dresses and dreams.
    
                    Tomorrow is fading fast.
             Everyday I grapple with yesterday's scar,
                  Yet, you look me in the eye,
                 And the scars mean nothing.

                The road to yesterday, I still travel.
                On yesterday's fence, I sit forlornly,
            Fiddling with the unmatched pieces of my life,
                   I cease to love anymore.

Today is gone,
Yesterday lost,
Tomorrow snatched,
Hopelessly she roamed.

Her reality, an irony,
Young and dusty was her soul,
only a few saw the cracks,
cracks covered with smiles.

In traffic she begged,
at strangers she beckoned,
with a grumbling belly,
Sleep her only succor.

So the shanties became hers,
the slums, her playground,
playing with a crooked doll,
she stared blankly at the horizon.

Hopefully,
sitting under a street lamp,
one day, she would go to school,
with a pink ribbon in her hair.