Dust

I saw them before I heard them, the glowing embers of the world that was. I saw them floating through the air, wafting gently downward onto our muddied flesh, the thunderous boom of the bombs shaking the ground beneath us as they broke the earth’s skin. A crack sounded in the distance, renting the night sky with its resounding finality.

A fine layer of dust settled over everything then: my eyes, my mouth, the tiny crevices of my ears. One could not breathe but taste the dust on one’s tongue, so abundant was its bloom. I held out my hands, imagining the small flecks of ash were snow on a winter’s morning.

Sometimes I think back to that day and wonder how we survived it. Ten miles further south, and we would be dust, too. But Providence was on our side that day and sometimes, you simply thank your lucky stars for your fortune instead of questioning your right to it.

Nowadays, it becomes harder and harder to say thank you. The ash cloud still hovers over our once fine city, a constant reminder that we will not see the sun again, not for as long as we live. And the chemicals we breathe in at all hours are crippling our lungs, clinging to our insides like an old man clings to life. I hate to hear the babies coughing, knowing they aren’t long for this world. Somehow, watching them born only to die a few hours later from their mothers’ poisoned milk is worse than fearing death yourself.

I want to wash it all away, to clear my brain of every shrill scream, of every hiccuping chirp for life. But I can’t stand to shower any more; my skin can’t take the water pressure.

Instead, I sit in the bath and lift a small bucket overhead, rinsing away the day’s madness as best as I can while the water ration is still in place. I miss the days before they took away our cleanliness. I miss smelling of roses and fresh mint. I miss the thick scent of coffee in the morning and the taste of sweet tea at night. I miss dancing with abandon, feeling the rhythm in my hips, feeling the beat shatter my soul, feeling anything at all but dirt. And dust.

I hate this dust.

This fine powder that covers everything that used to shine.

This horrible, leeching mess that masquerades as mere particulate when I know that it is so much more than that.

I look about me now and see what the dust has done to us. I see the furrowed brows of the neighbor’s children, their little hands wiping away at everything as if they could erase our mistakes. I see the way the ribs of broken animals shift as they sniff at every little morsel, searching for fresh food and water as if their walking cousins hadn’t ripped it all out of the earth long ago.

I see the dust and I see my naked self, blinded by my own nature before the bombs pulled my flesh from my face and gave me back my wisdom. I see the dust and I am free.

But freedom always comes at a price.

And I am so tired of paying it.

I wish the world could spin in reverse for a little while, so that I could tell them what was coming. I wish that I could warn them of the hideous ash on every inch of their once gleaming city. I wish that I could tell them how horrible it is not to see the sunlight, how dingy everything looks. I wish that I could save the people sleeping on silk sheets a mile south of here. But I can’t. So I just keep washing with what little water I have left. I keep scrubbing at my marred skin and wiping and scratching until the flesh is prickly red, my scars staring back at me. They ask why I didn’t do more, try harder. They ask why I didn’t fight while my body was still whole. They ask and I don’t answer.

I want to scream.

I leave the bath and feel the fresh caking of powder on the bottom of my bare feet. I walk through my empty house, not bothering to stop to brush them off.

I put on the last gift my husband left me: a heart-shaped locket with an inscription on it.

Always, it says.

Always.

He died of cancer six months to the day after the bombing. I’ve been alone here ever since.

I begin to befriend my layer of dust. I notice how finely it fits into my hidden spaces, the crooks and crannies of my body, even when I try my best to keep them clean. I begin to see that maybe the dust was always meant for me, for the world. Perhaps, this great fog of never-ending grime is what we all deserve. Perhaps we have only ever been dust in the first place, swirling in the great beyond.

Still, a part of me misses that old life with its glittering eyes and smiling teeth. The kissing. The laughing. The shuddering gasp of bodies in union. Who knew that dust could feel so much? A dying part of me longs to feel that way again, so enraptured by the very act of living that light itself seemed to sparkle.

For now, I am trapped in eternal dusk, the sunlight behind our great ash cloud changing only to darken further, trapping the stars forever behind its vast expanse as night takes over the sun’s bitter watch.

There are days when I still pray for help, still believe that someone will save us from this infernal smog. But weeks have passed and almost a year has died and buried itself in the great gray mist without a single word of solace.

No one is coming. No one is staying. No one but the dust ever stays anymore.

I hear the neighbor’s child is sick again. I want to comfort him but I don’t think I should. I think he should feel her little body grasping out for the same peace we’ve been searching for this long while. I think he should hold her while her little heart chokes out its last march toward life and her soul flies away from this place, past the empty houses and the great ash cloud, past the lightning storms above our heads and the acid rain south of here, past all the bleating animals and the unmarked graves. I think he should watch her spirit soar into that great mystery above our heads and wonder why we ever let them do it. Why we didn’t say something sooner. Why we didn’t die trying to stop them instead of being blinded by the dust.

But we didn’t.

And so, my neighbor will watch his daughter die tonight, the second one he’s lost. And I have no pity for the man, just as I have no pity for the world.

We did this to ourselves. And the dust is our penance.