The Ways of our People

In dark alleys

Girls hastily lose their virginity

Getting their first kisses at the age of seven, or even three.

Boys make their first kill with untested guns.

The kids stop going to school and

Pack their lives away like the textbooks in their bags.

The girls grow into women

The space between their legs avenues for men to explore the world.

Boys grow beards

And the girls they helped lose their innocence become old frail women, weather-beaten;

They abandon them –

Only to return, like prodigal sons, in coffins

Their bodies a bag of worms and viruses.