Human Dust
Imagine if we all stopped;
If we all got down on our knees,
our fresh, old, scabbed, tiny, white, grass-impressed knees.
And we leaned forward on our hands,
our worn, banded, un-banded, hennaed, soft, swollen hands.
And we pressed our noses to the ground,
our pierced, runny, broken, hooked, well-defined noses.
Imagine if we breathed in.
All seven-billion chests to the ground,
expanding our new lungs, patched lungs, smoked-out lungs.
We smell human dust.
Traces of footsteps,
sawdust of colonial Frigates,
spices from Asia,
particles of hair and skin: a sacrifice of the virgin,
shavings of Roman busts,
washed out patterns from the blizzard of 1888,
pieces of a cracked Sarissa from the 3rd century BC,
torn papers,
ligaments,
and hearts.
Imagine,
we become human dust.