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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.

[Kristin Jack is the Asia Coordinator of Servants. He and his family lived in Cambodia for 17 years. A book of his poetry, entitled 'Poetry and Prophecy' has just come out and is available from Servants.]