The Soul without a Master

Through midnight fields the silent figure goes,

No hunger drives him through the sleeping land;

A body walks where once a person rose,

Yet something else now holds the reins in hand.

The living fear the power that can command

A soul removed from all its former ties;

For death alone is not the deepest dread—

But life compelled beneath another's eyes.

In Haitian tales, the zonbi bears this weight,

A person robbed of freedom and control;

The body serves another's will and fate,

While absence settles where there lived a soul.

Not every story tells the same dark tale,

And meanings shift through generations' speech;

But at its heart lies terror of the veil

That separates the self from rightful choice.

Thus folklore gives the wandering form

A meaning deeper than the graveyard's dead:

The greatest horror is not death's cold storm,

But losing mastery of the self instead.