We sleep in derelict houses,
haunted by neglect and decay;
our dreams writhing with a disease
that scars our skin in memories
of lives we’ll never achieve.

We are not who we are in this place,
only who they allow us to be.

What they can’t keep from us,
they take from us greedily,
leaving us only these derelict bodies.

Our power, our labor, our passion
snatched from us, vultures on our carcass.

Our bodies left to fester in neglect,
what ravaged flesh that remains,
nothing like who we were in that cramped space.

Like the whole, the parts are just husks,
rags hanging on passively, Spanish moss on dead trees,
indifferent to their existence without purpose,
but not knowing of an end;
such things are their power,
                          their labor,
                          their passion.