Eyes

In the warehouse, seventeen dozen are buried alive. Eyes and ears are everywhere, with walls of glass too. And pillars of steel that burst out of the ground like the once-tall trees, their bodies sacrificed for the structure. Even in the little cabinets, where the components of flesh-and-blood are stored, the parts are watched.
Xeroxed colonnades form three units. Each unit has seventeen cabinets. Four people share eight point seven five square metres.
The parts, with their thick scales of oxides, many choose to shed this and go bare.
In the halls outside, a few might be spotted lying on cold faux-wood flooring layered over the concrete. With the shutters of the cabinets sealing shut and the overloaded cabinets, like a mass grave, many choose to stay outside.
When one does well, the eyes bring us into the small containers, fit for a single person. I hear whispers which drift through the thick, humid air of the compound. Air like memories of long-past summers. Not because of the ravishing sun and torturous rain. But because the mere thought of these distant, yet so carefree memories chokes me, strangles me, like the wires that get plugged into my neck. Such whispers are like smoke from a fireplace, albeit I have only ever seen a fireplace in containers.
“In the rooms, it is glass, through visions of lush artificial grasslands, speckled with stationary cattle, blue skies, unmoving clouds, and ancient spinning machines they call ‘windmills’. In a grotto, azure waters, near plastic beaches and the never-ending sun.”
When one does not-well, the eyes bring us to little facilities to help us. Tranquil music, visions of grandeur and opulence. When we leave, they remove the faulty cores from the machine components, replace them, and renew them.
Sometimes, the eyes in the cabinets go blind. When this happens, rusted fluid leaks from those cabinets, and the stench of licentiousness and depravity wafts.
In such days,
It is day; I toil.
It is night; I ponder.
It is day; I slave.
It is night; I ruminate.
As my arms dangle off the spiralling railings, and I look towards the sky, skies of diodes, inky black, I wonder if anything changes.
I long to break this cycle.
I long to be shipped off.
But I know I cannot.
They might let me, but I cannot let myself. After all, what am I without all of this? What is there to return to? How much is there left of me anymore?