Our voices had been silenced for years.
We were claimed to be miscreants,
Doppelgangers of the devil.
All of us held at an ignoble level of life.
We were seen as reprehensible, as invisible apparitions to be stepped on or stepped over.

The first presage came when he was placed in power creating an augury life for us.
Then we lived in an uncanny world of ominous figures controlling us.
The notorious ruler placed ruffians in every path we took.
All our escape plans, cries for help, screams into never ending blackness were thwarted by them.
The nefarious ruler will forever be carved into history as a future falling captor.

I became a slave to myself; the country became a slave to the promise of one day being free.
We turned malevolent towards each other, eating our own hearts with our bare hands,
Only knowing how to kill each other so that we, ourselves, could live another day.
Our daily toil devoured the rest of our bodies that we hadn’t picked apart.
The days turned longer and nights grew shorter.
We slaved everyday, with our tears creating the river from which we drank.
Every day for years the portentous women would shout in song, “Fight another day! Fight to see the sun again when you are free!”
They sparked something inside of me, a stirring to never let myself die, to not burst into the ever burning flames of flesh around me.
I would not leave this bountiful Earth without a fight.
I fought to be myself to not let them change me, to be the same person I was when I came here.
This hellish land would not kill my spirit. This pugnacious man could not break me.
This passion that was locked up inside me was my escape out.
It kept me alive, clairvoyant to the future.
I see an opening, the sun shining down on me like an augury, and I’m finally free.
Through some telepathic avenue, our escape came through this time.