At Five You Laughed [a poem]

At five you laughed and you danced,
dreaming that you were a princess
chosen to live in a castle,
surrounded by horses, knights and princes,
cocooned in your palace of dreams.

At five, your voice sang
like water flowing on a summers day,
your smile rivaled the sun,
and your chestnut charcoal eyes
blazed with beauty and with hope.

At ten, you were afraid
of a father who beat you
and a mother who looked away,
ashamed of poverty,
ashamed of what you would become.

At ten, your bewildered eyes
brimmed with unnamed fears.

At fifteen, you were in pain,
abandoned by a father who loved his whisky more,
sold by a mother who no longer cared
if you lived or died,
or if others took your breath from you.

At fifteen, your eyes were abandoned pools,
desolate in despair.

At seventeen, you were old,
your body had born the weight
of too many hate-full men,
and your eyes had seen far too much
of what the darkness does.

At seventeen, your shadowed eyes
were hardened narrow shafts.

At eighteen, you were alive but dead,
your youth and beauty taken,
your body stolen,
abused inside, your numbness spread,
amphetamines all that kept you breathing.

At eighteen, your bloodshot eyes
were road maps of your pain.

At nineteen, you were all but gone,
in body, soul and spirit,
a skin-bag of bones,
gnawed by TB, AIDS, and thrush,
which picked your flesh away.

At nineteen, your jaundiced eyes
stared from your skull like marbled glass.

At twenty, you were dying in the street,
thrown out lest you deter the custom
with your weeping skin
and orifices of blood and mucous
carrying the stench of death.

At twenty, your half-closed eyes
pleaded for an end.

By twenty and some days, your life was over,
without ever having seen a castle,
without ever having met a prince.
Refuse collectors found, and had you cremated,
unknown, unnamed, unmourned, forgotten.

They could not tell
that at five, your voice sang
like water flowing on a summers day,
your smile rivaled the sun,
and your chestnut
charcoal eyes
had blazed with beauty
and with hope.

But there is One who sees,
and One who knows,
who remembers every deed
to punish and reward,
his princely eyes
shine with every dream,
and never lets them go.

He sees you too,
like a precious bride
and leads you now
into the palace of your dreams,
and one day soon
he will build a kingdom
where you will live
beyond the reach of men,
with hope and love
burning deep within,
where you will live
with more beauty yet,
than any pompous,
earthly Queen.

by Kristin Jack, who lived with his family for 17 years in Cambodia. From his book Poetry and Prophecy