...Taken....

Just a child myself at the age of sixteen,
yet I believed the words spoken to me
those words of love that we long to hear.

He claimed he was going to marry me,
only then did I find out he had a wife.
My heart was broken when I was told,
that a child now grew inside of me, his child.

My parents did not look at me when told,
they just sent me off to the church,
for how could a daughter of theirs do such a thing.

Once there, I am taken into a room,
told to strip and a doctor looks me over.
Sent to a room that has over twenty other
girls that are all in different states of being with child.

The only thing we all have in common
is the fact that not a single one of us was married.
We all sleep on a mattress on the floor.

Never do any of them look at us,
they just check on our health every now and again.
We are tired beyond anything because
of all the work we have to do for them.

Little sleep comes to us as our time gets closer,
for it starts to get hard to move off the floor
at the break of each new day.

All those that have had their children, those
we never see again, for once you leave this room
you never ever return here and we can hear weeping at night.

Now it is my turn, for they have taken me into a small room,
there is a table that they place me on, and the pain is unbearable.
I scream so loud that I am slapped in the face.
I want to see my child, to hold him as the doctor says it's a boy.

But, they take him out as soon as he is cleaned up,
and they finish working on me, nothing can compare
to this ache I feel in the pits of my heart.

It has been three days that I have been locked up
in a small cell like room, they only came in once
to say that I was healthy and would soon be able
to leave, that is once I sign my baby over to them.

I loved the father of my child, and if I can not have him,
I want to keep our baby with me and raise him myself.
Yet, today they said if I do not sign the paperwork
I will be locked away for they will say I never had a baby.

So, today, I give in and sign their forms.
No longer is he mine, yet, for the first time
I am able to see him and hold him, just before
he is taken from me forever.

That was five years ago, and here I sit and wonder
what his life has been like since I was force to give him away.
Force is the right word, for what else could it had been.

My parents have disown me, and now I work in this sweat shop
just to make ends meet, but not for long.


As night falls and the traffic picks up,
none sees the lady of twenty one years step off
the bridge and drowns herself.