Old structures by the sea are beaten down into broken pieces of concrete and tarnished walls. Fires raged, leaving their mark throughout the infrastructure of this hydroelectric plant. Everything back home feels like buildings decapitated of their souls. The comandante and his delivered promises of success lacked derision at first, while all were brainwashed with the hopes of days yet to come for a freer Cuba. Lies rotting out of the eyes of the politicians, one of my grandfathers lied too—after falling into the trap of a skewed version of equality. Little did they know they should have looked towards equity, maybe then our homes and workspaces would still breathe life into our people.

Overgrown with grass creeping over cement walls, our buildings decompose like the living beings that performed their lives’ work within them. Steam stacks don’t spew steam anymore, but the invisible souls of my people float onward, upward, towards a heaven of blue skies and turquoise oceans that wail against the rocks separating our buildings from it. My people have drowned in that ocean as they try to escape crumbling structures like the Cuban government, once and always full of corruption and disguises. Old TV screens are housed in each building because at least all people deserve a TV, better to brainwash them with.

One day the fifth floor will destroy the fourth and the only way to go from there will be down… and down will my people go. Down will fall my soul with every cracking piece of wall like the breaking heart encased within my ribs. I’ll just sit here across the ocean staring at Jupiter’s raging storm in my coffee as I ponder origins and family trees nonexistent, forever forgotten in history like the structures I speak of.

Image by V. Ariosa taken in Santa Cruz del Norte, Provincia Mayabeque (previously part of Provincia Habana). Electric Plant.