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.