Hanging around cemeteries,
carrying shovels.
Work that breaks hearts and hands.
Singing bittersweet songs that
feel like a great cry but sound like a whisper.
There's not many to listen anyway,
only the corpses, spirits, and undertakers.
It's not meant to entertain,
just to keep me moving.
Every day is the same,
unless of course I find something interesting
during a dig.
All sorts of neat stuff.
Keys, coins, bottles.
One time I found an Irish coin.
My work is cheap, but it's important.
Without me, the dead would be haunting you,
attacking you, cursing you.
In a way, I am trained to serve Hades himself.
I pave the passage into the next world.
My work is a necessary chore.
A long and necessary chore,
my family's always asleep by the time I get home,
covered in grey dust and black and brown earth,
smelling like corpses and gasoline,
my face a little more brown.
My work is cheap.
My work is menial.
My work is laborious.
but don't judge me based upon my wages.
If you do, I just might dig your grave next.