From a little hospital room in Cambodia.

What if:

The night they tied me up and took me away,
had never happened.

What if:

I had never known what it was to bed a man,
before my first period.

What if:

I hadn't been electrocuted every time I said no,
to the in and out game.

What if:

Every man who paid to have me, looked at me as
the child I am.

What if:

I hadn't been stitched up again and again, to be,
a virgin again.

What if:

The blood and unformed flesh didn't ooze out of me;
my aborted offspring.

What if:

I hadn't been mauled, and had my eye torn apart, ceasing to be
a sale-able commodity.

Would I be able to go back and be a child again?


This is poem 23 for Robert Lee Brewer's April PAD Challenge 2011. Prompt: "A what if poem".

As I count down to the last few poems in the last few days of NaPoWriMo, inspiration was running low. Oprah came to my rescue, and showed me the story of a little girl in Cambodia, whose story this poem narrates. This was a very difficult poem to write, as I am still trying to digest what I just saw.