“What Holds” — A Reflective Poem About Labor, Luxury, and the Silent Weight of Inequity

For my dear friend, Travis, who changed the way I see the world and showed me what travel really costs.

Your stories — told with grace, humor, and hunger — opened my eyes to the imbalance beneath paradise. While you served tourists with dignity, you survived on handouts from your friend’s jerk chicken stand. This poem is for you — and everyone like you — who carries the world without ever being invited to rest in it.

“What Holds”

They say the world is rising —
steel bones stretching toward clean skies,
glass reflecting futures
too bright to see.
But beneath that light,
there are hands
thin as hunger,
that do not let go.

You will not find them in the frame —
not in the brochures
or behind the bar
where the cocktail costs a week’s worth of rice.
But they are there,
bending like prayer,
bodies quiet beneath the weight
of something they will never touch.

What is luxury
if not the smooth face of a cube,
balanced on desperation?