Dust
By Victoria Boynton

“Every seven years we get a new body. You might think of it as an entire cellular turnover. And house dust –it’s almost alive it has so many human cells in it.”

                                                            A friend with a Ph.D. in biology

When I used to live here, my feet arched higher,

required no special lifts; my eyes

were fit for fine print; my intestine walls,

reliable as snow tires, never burned

when I ate the jalapeno and tequila worm.

And I could come on a dime.

I am not who I was: myself back then

like this old address, lost in the bottom

of a deep purse: a dusty trace

on a paper scrap, blue blur of house numbers,

buried under a gritty fold in

an unused pocket. 

I’ve carried the fuzzy marks of that Lonestar

marriage, like an old tatoo on a private place,

smeared past rubbed to nonsense.

But these numbers leap up, suddenly clear,

from the dusty scrap, dance like blood

on a golden page.

Tomorrow, back home, my third husband

will find me at the baggage claim.

He will place his kiss, coat my mouth

with his, and I will flake off like ash,

leaving an invisible snow of fresh cell,

a trail.

Our beds and chairs and cars are full

of us, that evidence, dust,

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