When I was a homeless girl
When I was a homeless girl
I had yellow teeth with holes,
Big enough to fall through.
Twenty six years of antibiotics
written on my enamel.
I got famous, got veneers,
I felt so guilty,
people were starving in Africa
and I wanted to smile
without shame.
When I was a homeless girl
I had favorite knickers.
They’d done time.
Their sides held with safety pins
on a dyed blond punkette
but they were mine.
I got famous, bought lingerie,
I had a bra from a shop that smelled of newness
I had knickers you could frame on a wall
And I wondered how much a girl in China
Had got paid for each pair.
When I was a homeless girl
I fought with a druggie over a fifty cent sweater
it was cable knit, wool, shrunken and tatty
but it looked so alive in the dead of winter.
And he won, after he slapped my face.
I got famous,
bought the best sweater in the op shop
a whole five dollars
with a no-name label
and the knowledge it was mine.
Donna Williams, Dip Ed, BA Hons.
Author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter.
Autism consultant and public speaker.
For further poems, please visit:
http://www.donnawilliams.net
