Ashley Walks Them In

Ashley walks in the girls
Who come with their boyfriends
Who come with their friends
Who come with their brothers
Who come with their parents

She feels like
Not enough
Come with their parents

But she doesn't think about that

She walks them through the line
Of people with picket signs
And into the doors
And there she stops

Beyond the doors
There are moral complications
That Ashley can't agree with

But she agrees that girls
Need someone to lead them
Especially when they show up with nobody
Which is far too often

Her family says she's perpetuating the sins
That go on inside
By standing by the sides of those
Who are determined to walk through those doors

She's told that some use it as birth control
But she's never seen an example of this yet
That she could pinpoint

She sees forty-year-old women
And fifteen-year-old girls
But never anyone
Like what her family describes

How funny that they wouldn't come within ten miles of this place
But they're so sure who goes in and out of it
What happens inside it
What the people work there are like
What Ashley is like for walking with these girls

She's had things thrown at her
Words, objects, hateful glares

But still she walks them in

Across town there was a bombing
At another place like this
And that was when Ashley's Dad
Demanded that she give it up

But Ashley has her conviction

She believes in God
She believes in Jesus
She believes Jesus would be walking these girls in

He would forgive them for their sin
As he was walking them into it

Isn't that the absolute forgiveness?

Sometimes she has days
Where she judges
Where she thinks she knows
The girl on her arm

When she doesn't feel badly for them
When she wishes she could be somewhere else
When their shame washes over onto her
And she feels like she's the one
About to walk through those doors

But then she'll get a girl her age
Who looks like her
Who is walking through the doors
Because they had one less drop of luck
Than what Ashley got

And she holds her head up
And takes their hand
And walks with them
Right by their side

And as she walks with them
She feels someone
Something
A presence
Walking her
Walking the girls

To wherever it is
They need to go