We're All in This Together

The CEO stood at the podium, beaming,

"We're all in this together,"

while behind him, a slide displayed
record profits, feather-light layoffs,
a pie chart shaped like a boot.

The room applauded. Someone cried,
quietly into their lanyard.

"We're all in this together"–

he said it like a hymn, like a hand
extended, palm up, empty.

The interns nodded. The interns
were unpaid. The interns
were, in fact, extremely alone,
googling rent on their phones
under the table, together.

Later, in the break room, a poster:
a kitten dangling from a branch.

Hang in there!

And beneath it, someone had written in Sharpie:

we're all in this together

like a curse, like a joke
only the exhausted understand.

The union rep tried to speak.
Security called it "disruption."

The CEO, from his glass office,
watching on a monitor, murmured
to no one, to everyone,

"we're all in this together"–

and pressed a button

that was not, in any sense,
a button they could press too.

Months passed. The company "restructured,"
a word that means some of us stayed
and some of us did not,

though the holiday email still opened,
cheerful as ever:

What a year! We're all in this together.

Gift cards attached.
Fourty percent of the mailroom, not.

Now the phrase is a magnet
on someone's fridge, half-ironic,
holding up a child's drawing

of a house on fire, smiling.

Not the speeches.
Not the posters.
Not the emails.

Just the house burning,
the smoke finding everyone eventually,
the people with lifeboats
and the people without oars
watching the same water rise.

"We're all in this together."

Say it enough times

and eventually
everyone stops asking
who gets the lifeboats.