Sunday, March 17, 2024

It's Not Easy

Have you noticed how hard it is to be good?
For forty days I have gone
to the Progresso bridge.
Walking up concrete inclines
pulling wagons with granola bars, soap, ice, water, milk, clothes, sanitary pads, and once, as a special request, a brown paper bag with condoms.
All for .migrants who wait, sleep, eat, and sweat on a bridge turned in to a prison where people wait to cross those few sacred feet into a land they believe in
more than I.

I sweat like a cold beer
on a hot humid day, and
my Spanish is a shy toad
hiding under a rock.
Why am I doing this
I wonder? There are others
who speak the language,
who are in better shape,
about whom the men will
not whisper "maricón" even
as they take my food and water.

I'm doing it because no one else
Is.
I'm doing it because posting on social media is not enough.
I'm doing it because they are human.
I'm doing it so one day in the future,
I can say,
"I resisted."