When I was a kid in projects, I'd stay up and pretend to sleep when my mom came home from work at the hospital. Just so I could hear her stories to my dad about fighting for her patients who were HIV+. Another deadly affliction that was turned into pandemic by manmade inequity.

She would impersonate everyone's voices. Doctors. Patients. Family. Ex boyfriends and new boyfriends of patients. They became her family and I got to hear about her other family every night like a dark play.

Sometimes she, a nurse, would come home sobbing. There would be no impressions of people, just loss. Just stories of how everyone showed up for one of her patients. And how no one showed up for another. In their final moments.

Today a lot of people, most people, aren't even allowed to have people show up for them for that moment. They are alone. Many, most, and in some places - all - of those people are people of color, Black people and immigrants. People who had to work during this to keep us fed.

We can certainly celebrate them as brave. They are. But they didn't sign up for this. They were economic hostages of a racial capitalism that only values their labor during crisis, but doesn't value their lives during the same crisis. Because when one goes, another will appear.

Every night now, during the same time that I once waited for my mom to come home, I imagine children today waiting for their parents to come home. A nurse. A warehouse worker. A food delivery person. A driver. And they may not come home. And that kid can't even say bye, I love u.