Tiny Hands

There are hands caressing me
Shouts of ecstasy
Like a thousand
Quiet symbols
Breaking the silence
And I scream
My voice joining the chorus
Of a million other women
Feeling this same feeling
Feeling like this moment
Will last a lifetime

Because it does.
And oh god those hands
Cause me to pause
I’ve heard that when you take a lover
What’s mine is yours
But I know his hands will never be mine
But neither will mine—can I call them that?

I remember when the promise of a sparkling city
drove the dust of a childhood hometown
out of my eyes
and my future was clean, bright,
until the day I arrived
and met it.

See they told me in the city I’d find a wonderful job
With money falling from the sky
I could send it home to my parents
Who needed food more than
They needed one more daughter.

At first the work was torture
because I refused to cave
electric shocks
traveling my body
until I gave up
gave up my body

and then I met the men
some days it’s only 25
that touch me
fuck me
and some days its 40

and everyday they are old
but I am older
with words
that begin with nostalgia

“back in my day life was beautiful”

Except, back when I was six years old
And my presentday-owners were planning
On which little ones to
Steal, cajole, convince or simply purchase
Life was not beautiful
Because these rooms were already filled
with Nepalis girl
Just like me.

Sometimes I wonder what could happen
If I owned my own hands
What sort of difference I could make

But I am just another twelve-year-old sex slave.
These body parts do not belong to me.
I do not belong to me.

I stop feeling
When I realize nobody
knows I exist
Or cares.
Why do they study slavery in history when it still exists?
When it’s not the south in America, it’s the entire world
But India is not
And I am just one of millions

Today melds with tomorrow
Like his hands on my body
Caressing me,
Each touch more violent than the last.

I have tiny hands
But not as small
As the seven year old who
May replace me
When disease has stolen my body
Away from my owners
And thirty is the age on the tombstone
Nobody will erect.
Because it erects itself
He is my tombstone
But can’t you understand
That when you watch
With apathetic eyes
Each moment you’re hands
Lay passively at their sides
You throw more dirt on my grave

And when you make no effort
to release me from the cage I am kept in--a literal cage
with bars I’ve learned to breath through

You are the difference between saving
One girl at a time
And slaving one girl at a time

But it’s not just one girl
It’s me.
My name is Asha.
I have name.
And it is the only thing that is mine.

_____________________________

To learn more, visit the website of Tiny Hands International (a Lincoln-based organization dedicated to stopping human trafficking--one girl at a time)