I am a girl.
Cared for by my mother.
My infant brother on her back
As we wander the streets.
Haps hold our sparing meals.
Dusk always show us our bed.
We lay where she meets us.

She is a girl.
The night is too frigid for her brother and her.
Their mother looses her old wrapper
She wraps them in it and wraps her arms around them.
She can't bear them shiver
Even though she has pneumonia.

I was a girl
but I'm now a woman.
A child yesternight
but by morning a mother!
Maturity came on me prematurely.
Death made me an orphan,
Life made me a mother at seven.

She's a mother.
Tending her 'child' is her only prize.

She was a girl.
Cared for by her mother.
Affection is now memory.
Her infant brother on her back
As she wanders the streets.
Haps hold their sparing meals.
Dusk shows her their bed.
And tonight it is a stairway.