#85

Matching blue eyes
Flash through glass
Beneath the stop lights of a ticking city

Could have been sisters
Could have been friends
To see their similarity

Both are thinking
Of underground,
One – “It’d be faster to take the subway”

The other is dreaming
That she could find freedom
On a different underground railway

She lives a life
Day by day
That most read of in history class

A modern slave
In a “developed” world
A secret that sleeps with the past

Her tattered jeans
Hide invisible bruises
Her brokenness is indistinct

She looks through two windows
At the girl, like reflections
Remembers extinct ages and thinks –

“They took punishment –
Mind and body
On the basis of their skin

I am harnessed
For my adolescent body,
My skin – contaminated

Not a choice
This is not my fault –
I didn’t resort to this for pay

If you saw me clearly
Through your hazy stigmas
You would see that this is rape

If only she
Could make herself heard –
Find an advocate on her side

But left dreaming of freedom
She’s never known
She just stares into matching blue eyes

Abolition
Should be an ancient term –
A well-learned status quo

But it finds itself
Resurfacing –
A repetitious modern goal

Abolition
Means annihilation –
Slavery should be outdated

Not silenced by Shame,
Or denied by Ignorance –
Trafficking must be eradicated

Abolition
Is not a movement
Until more movement is made

She’s calling out
With damaged blue eyes
To a world that looks away

Weak and voiceless
From years of abuse
Still she longs to prevail

Longing for someone
To remind her captors
That she is Not For Sale

Child trafficking –
Shrouded in euphamism
Reality drowned in abstraction

Abolition requires
Revolutionaries –
And this is your call to action

Matching blue eyes
But worlds away,
They part when the light turns green

But tied up in traffick
Of differing kinds
Only one is actually freed