Everything was beautiful.
The sky was light sapphire,
full of lazy painted clouds,
trees singing in vibrant warm hues,
as only trees can do,
looming like buildings,
while the buildings loomed like trees.

Even the people
were acting carefree,
looking it too.
For once there was no talk of hunger,
no expressions of sorrow, not even stress.
Today, it seemed,
no one could find a trace of death

We worked the day and part of the night,
sweat for our nothing and fell asleep in heaps.

The sounds were in our dreams at first,
and then jolting awake – electric in our veins.
We huddled in our underground island,
filled every corner and crevice
– shivering spaces –
for believing the world would cave in on us.

Days passed. We went insane and they let us go.
Suddenly we were on the surface of another planet’s moon,
ambling over rocks in places shadows used to be,
mute, stunned ghosts with heartbeats,
tripping in the holes left by the unlucky,
the people slowly burned to less than ash.

We feel as if we may never leave this place.
It has been branded beneath our eyelids,
sewn searing into the folds of our brains.
We have learned the full extent of human cruelty