The Rust Worker
I enter the factory before the sun remembers to rise,
and leave my heart outside the gates.
In here, no one asks who I used to be —
only how many hours I can still endure.
My hands produce rust,
nameless parts, machines without memory.
Everything I touch grows old,
perhaps because my hands learnt how from me.
I am a heartless worker,
a number lost among bolts and smoke,
a man trading his own soul
for a few notes at the end of the month.
The metal screams.
The machines breathe.
I remain silent.
I make things that will continue existing
long after I am gone,
whilst every fragment of who I was
is slowly consumed by the shift.
I have no life left to give the factory,
only whatever remains of it.
And still, I return every day.
Perhaps work is my last form of prayer.
Perhaps every finished piece
is a small attempt at redemption.
I do not want to be rich.
I do not want to be remembered.
I only want, one day,
to look at my hands covered in rust
and discover that something human still remains in them.
Because some men work to live.
I work
to discover whether I am still alive.