Frayed Edges

Frayed Edges

Her lean brown frame, suggested she wasn’t quite of age.
Her conversation conveyed she was a novice.
Her attitude alerted others that she wanted to be grown.

But her frayed edges spoke of the untold,
You wouldn’t understand Miss Jackson, she said.
My world is different from yours.

I looked into her still young tender eyes,
You would be surprised what I have seen and heard.
Young girls stretched, tugged, and gnawed on like pieces of meat.
Babies left in the middle of the night before they can even speak.
I’ve seen and heard it all, but I have never seen someone so young, with such frayed edges.

Well, what do you want to do, call the police,
Send me to the principal’s office,
Tell my mama.

There isn’t a system that can fix this.
The sickness of the world is created by the world.
The exploitation of children is the new slavery.
We have exchanged cotton cash crops for sexual solicitation of the innocent.

We adorn our baby girls in couture gowns and lipstick, forgetting that they are not plastic dolls but a human child on the inside.

Stripper poles adorn our basements and living rooms like family portraits and bezique figurines.

The edges and the lines are frayed, fragile and frightening is the society that sales its children to the highest bidder.

Shannise Jackson-Ndiaye