Dear Benevolent Dust,

 

Word of advice: avoid a house with corners. Shave off your elbows. Ceiling bends lower much too low every day & the walls they cough dust. I keep finding evidence of a new haunting: popped off heads, disjoined limbs, a solitary torso found skewered at the base of the stairs. Pink puddles of plastic pooled into the corners an ancient oriental rug or splashed across a ghost-white curio. Am I mad? Everywhere it seems there is a quick rustling, everywhere a snow globe leaking artificial winters, an army of dolls with sleepy excavated eyes. Bodies mutely begging in freaksilence. CHORUS PANIC PANTOMIME.

 

Am I lost for good? All exile, I think, is infolded exile. No gauze for the bleeding out spirit.

 

Just tell me what to do & I’ll do it. Tell me how to unswallow this winder I’ve ingested, how not to be a small broken thing. The storm is not in my skull alone, I know. My husband, he tramples through minefields too. & I am compassionate as math. Tell me how to try & I’ll try. Everything is pale forever & the chandelier by which we used to measure our light now swarms with snakes.

 

In Dust We Trust,

R