A Cry From a Server
We stand on our feet for 12 hours for you.
We provide you with delicious sustenance.
We support your industry and innovation at the cost of our physical health.
We rescue you from drug overdoses and alcohol abuse when locked up in the bathroom.
We put out fires when you have lit them.
We keep the floors clean and dry for you when the rain comes sweeping down.
We unclog toilets when you decide not to flush.
We accept abuse from those above us.
We are forced to be silent of your daily sexual harassment to us.
We sacrifice our happiness for you.
We spend more time on our knees praying than hugging our children.
We are uncertified therapists.
We are lost opportune artists.
We are filled with skills, abilities, and dreams.
With all that we do,
All that we serve,
You still don’t find us worthy of a living wage.
What more can we do?
What amount of pleas would be sufficient?
For you to think we’re good enough.
We are restaurant workers.
Sleeping on the porchtop
While we cooked the cookbook
And banked near the future's marble digits
Strung out
While strumming false notes
There's always some emergency far off
Let's just sit
And pour into me
So i can unstress
On this overburdened safety net
Still
A wiry frame built
There was no plunging the code
Only through the registered
Prism can you enter
Maybe, maybe
There could be change
And rearrange a gross imbalance
Not in this sleepy town
Or with these unregistered, uncertified
Mockery of credentials
There's no negating the inevitable
So string through with faith
That life always finds away
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