Open Letter to You

by Larissa Sanchez-Payne (age 24)

Waking though you can hardly move, Working day just ahead.

Washing from the water pump in your trunk, Weary with life, There was once a time before this misery, when grass tickled naked heels. Sunbathed in hope you strove. Tomorrow was a dream. Now it is time to go, in a four wheeled home, to toil another day. Not paid to live, just to barely survive, yet still demanding more more more.

Swallowing down screams of injustice, this is now.

Fabric obscures detachment, a small buoy in a sea of chains. Still you defy, doing work that would make your ancestors cry, Why!?

How do you, my descendant, still labor for another's profit? With your back bent, hands cracked dry, etching canyons in flesh. Days spent inside these warehouse walls, barely making rent. Choking on unclear air, plague, pollution, violence so thick it grates against your teeth. The sunset of one virus, sunrise of another.