Waiting Again, Los Angeles

We wait and we wait and we wait. Patiently. Lovingly. Anguished.

We wait for our schools to be safe,

For our streets to be cleaned,

For our ​vecindades​ to have jobs,

For our families to walk through these spaces without being criminalized.

And we wait for newcomers to stop leering at us as if ​we​ entered ​their​ havens.

We wait for our landlords to answer our calls,

For the faucets to have clean water,

For our roofs to stop caving in on us every time it rains,

And for real estate agents to stop selling out the only places we call home.

We wait for the clinics to admit us without first labeling us,

For our doctors to work with instead of just getting rid of us,

For our ‘coverage’ to stay put without our having to reapply,

And for healthcare that isn’t based on our (in)ability to pay.

We wait for the few jobs we do have to pay livable wages,

For our superiors at work to stop bullying us,

For interviewers to stop merely using our names to cross off some checklist,

And we wait to work ​for uplifiting​ our communities rather than just addicting them.

We wait for billionaires to stop bloating our ​veins,

For ‘checks and balances’ to check and balance the polluters,

For the GMs and the Coca Colas, to be reined in,

And for ‘leaders’ who don’t call for these things only when it’s election season.

We wait for the courts to stop feeding on our bodies as these other waits hold,

For any allies in our resistance in these struggles to view us as partners, not collateral,

We wait for another ​way of life​ to finally arrive,

And we wait for it to get here before it’s too late for another one of our babies.

We wait patiently. Lovingly. Anguished.

But the past has yet to die.

When is it time, Los Angeles.