The Shroud of Poverty

The lines of too many dire decisions,

Show in the composition of her face.

Her body language spells desperation,

In effect, she shrinks from the world.

She carries the weight of the world on her shoulders,

I can hear its mass in the heaviness of her sigh.

She carries the love she can’t remember,

Deep in the recesses of who she used to be.

To go without has left her constantly wanting,

Feeling deprived makes her want even more.

Her feet shuffle along as she cradles her child on one hip,

The shroud of poverty swallows them up into nothingness.