The One Unseen

 

She lies on the bed,

Or rather,

The filthy, old mattress.

There is no civilized word that can be used to describe it.

It crawls with creatures

And is laced with substances,

Things for which she does not know their names.

 

There is nowhere for her to go.

She is illegal,

Unwanted,

Hidden,

Discarded,

Unseen.

 

Those who loved her

Are either gone

Or dead

Or far away.

 

The men come so often,

But they failed to notice her

In any way,

But the way they want.

 

They do not even notice her chains,

Though they have to feel them.

They do not notice her eyes,

Closed to the inevitable pain,

Utterly vacant,

As she tries

Every time

To leave her own body.

 

They do not notice her age,

Her worn, thin face,

Her bones that almost stick out of her skin

From near starvation.

 

They do notice her filth,

But this is not hers, 

Nor are her chains.

These are all things

She never asked for..

It is his fault

That she is left like this.

 

They complain

And take out their frustrations.

On the skeleton of a girl,

Who once had a life.

 

She is punished by them

And by the one, 

Who took her,

But it is not her crime.

 

Her life was across the border,

In a country that was hated by the world,

That hated the world right back.

She knew none of this,

But only what the regime taught.

She had once been a good student,

But she could never hope to go to school again.

After all,

She was,

As the government of where she was claimed,

An illegal economic migrant.

 

Yet,

There was nothing economic about her life,

And she was a migrant out of necessity.

She was only deemed illegal by the government

Of the land which held her in its grasp.

 

They did not care to know

That she had been tricked and fooled,

That her father had starved himself to death, 

So that her mother, brothers, sister, and her, could continue to live.

They did not care to know

That her mother and sister were sold

Far away

to supposed farmers,

In reality,

Members of the same gang.

They did not care to know

That her brothers were now known as wandering swallows,

Children, who lived on the streets,

Because there was usually no more home for them.

They did not care to know

That she did not know

The fate of all her immediate family,

Much less her extended.

They did not care to know

Her name

Or her story.

They did not care to know

That she was locked in a house,

Chained to an abominable, soaked mattress,

That veritably moved on its own.

They did not care to know

That she was Almost always naked,

In the hot and in the cold.

They did not care to know

That her owner

Had cut a hole

In his own roof,

So that he could give her more misery

From the natural world above.

They did not care to know

That she was almost always locked in

Behind a deadbolt and a heavy door,

Only known

To those who had the key

And to the occasional stranger,

Who was too terrified to intervene.

They did not care to know

That her only brief moments of respite

Were working his untended fields,

Or cleaning his squalid house.

They did not care to know

That she was not even a teenager yet,

And that a new life was growing inside of her,

in the midst of a living death.

They did not care to know

That those, who lived nearby,

Knew of her existence,

His secret,

But cared too little,

Or feared too much,

To do anything

To save her life.

They did not care to know

How close to death she was.

They did not care to know

That she was wasting away.

They did not care to know

Of her horror and panic

From the realization 

That she would have a baby

In this evil place.

They did not care to know

Anything about her.

They did not care to know

That there was a soul,

Withered and dying by the second,

But still there,

Behind that vacant stair.

They did not care to know

That the head crawling with lice

Covered with disheveled, tangled hair.

Could still think thoughts of her old life,

Of family,

Of friends,

Of freedom.

They did not care to know

That the ravaged, savaged, tiny body still felt pain,

Even if she hit it from fear

And had worn her throat raw from screaming

In the beginning

So long ago.

They did not care to know

Her at all,

Unless somebody decided to report her

To them,

At which point

They would care enough

To send the police

To take her away

to what had once been her home,

To what would then be her hell.