The Sound of Dust

Dust falls from the ceiling like old promises I tried to keep but couldn’t hold. I sweep it into my hands, but it slips away, finding corners I cannot reach, creeping into the cracks of walls, of floors, of memory.

Each speck is a whisper of what I forgot— a letter never sent, a hand I should have held, a word that died before it could bloom. The air smells of time’s slow decay, and I breathe it in as if inhaling regret could make it solid again.

I watch it settle on the shelves, on the edge of my desk, on the chair where no one sits, and I realize: dust is more than dirt— it is the residue of absence, the weight of all the moments we could not keep.

I try to gather it, but it is always there, between my fingers, in the silence, in the empty rooms of my own body. And yet, in its quiet way, it reminds me that even what is lost is still here, if I only know how to see it.