Sixteen years of suffering

 So there's this girl, 

this sixteen years old,

who works for us, 

watches our boy, 

and the first thing I notice about her,

when she comes every morning, 

is how frail she is! 

Skinny, 

almost famished! 

Sunken cheeks,

just a thin layer of flesh, 

pasted onto the Mandible,

Collar bones proturding,

from under the skin, 

thin, boney fingers, 

dark, sad, sceptical eyes! 

Eyes that look at everything

and everybody 

with a deprived suspicion, 

that and a wrinkled forehead, 

already at sixteen, 

burdened with burdens, 

that a sixteen year old 

should not have known! 

But everthing she touches, 

she still touches it gently, 

the plants, 

the toys, 

the boy! Who, when she calls out, 

she calls out with such love,

'kiku, kiku, kikaa',

she runs after him, 

calling out, 

like he's one of her own; 

leaving me amazed at how! 

And when she eats, 

I stand in a corner, 

sometimes,

watching her from a distance, 

quickly lap up whatever there is, 

and then after the first few minutes, 

slowly, 

relishing each grain, each drop, 

and from a distance, 

I look at her perfect heart shaped face sometimes,

triangular amlost, 

perfect proportions, 

her beautiful almond eyes, 

those delicate young hands, 

that beautiful sixteen year old body, 

curled up on a chair,

feet propped up,

head resting on the knee, 

scratching her neck, 

thinking;

thinking, imagining, worrying, 

and trying to find a way,

to deal with something, 

that's always on her mind.

And when we sit down together, 

when there's not much left to do, 

when the boy is asleep, 

she looks at me intently,

smiles and says, 

'you have fairer hands',

and when we walk together, 

she says,

'you are so tall',

and when we dress to go outside, 

sometimes, she says, 

'you look so pretty'! 

It makes me almost uncomfortable, 

the way she looks at me,

and says these things,

almost with a longing to be

who I am, 

thinking perhaps,

about her own mother, 

who has been a construction worker,

most of her life, 

hands hardened from handling the mortar, 

skin charred from working in the Sun, 

frail and skinny and famished like her, 

from all the years of suffering,

eyes, sad, like a fire, doused out,

by centuries of hopelessness!

How I wish I could tell her, 

beautiful dear child, 

if only you would have had enough yo eat!!