Burmese Girls Sold into Prostitution in Thailand
 

In order that her parents not go deeper into debt
she does not kill herself, she is
the bargain, the chip, she evens
the odds even though she cannot speak
the language, Thai, it misaligns her tongue, sounds
oily to her ears, the tongues of men, the forcing
of them, hundreds, thousands, how many
places can they find on her, the body has only
so many openings and she loses
value quickly once twice maybe three
times she can be passed off
as a virgin even as she faints, even as she
counts the bricks in the windowless
walls, corridors where she never sees
the sun unless—to settle the madam’s score—she is
arrested, hauled out from the underground
cells—then only the quiet ones are not
redeemed, the ones who do not
know how to smile at men, but she is
ransomed back to the metal
bed, the cement floor, the men again and
again, especially the drunks
frighten her, so she feels nothing, nothing
when the child moves inside her, nothing
when the poison she takes flattens
her belly so that another girl will never
be born to turn eleven or twelve into nothing
of value but the stories she makes even when
the fatigue claims her and she is coated with sores and
sent back to her village where she is
whispered about, no friends, nothing
but these mascara’ed eyes, this fringed
cloth embroidered with tales of luxury rides
bringing the city to the village in a voice
hardened to the waste the man in her dreams
who appears dressed in red brings—
until fevers overtake her and her
mouth turns dry and she is
so thin the wind blows through her until she is
parched, barely bones and so little flesh
left for the pyre, but they burn her body anyway, let
flames rise around her, the heel the strongest
glowing coal, a searing eye watching back at
them a long time as they burn all that is
hers: the city clothes, the plastic shoes, the drinking cup.