What the Dust Saw

The dust had been patient.

It had watched from the corners of the room, gathering in the places where attention no longer reached, building small monuments to the moments that were no longer visited. Dust does not judge. Dust simply arrives where things have been left too long.

There was a clock on the wall. Not a remarkable clock. Its face was ordinary and its hands moved with the kind of stubbornness that comes from not knowing how to stop. The clock had been trying. For years it had been trying. Each tick was an offering. Each tock a prayer that the room would hold.

The window across from the clock was always open.

This was the first wound, though the clock did not know it as a wound then. The window believed that air should come from everywhere. That the breeze from the east was not enough when there was also a breeze from the west, from the south, from the hills the clock could not see. The window called it freedom. The clock called it trying.

The clock understood that the window was made of glass and glass is transparent. It sees everything. It wants to be seen through from all directions. So the clock kept ticking. It gave its gears. It loosened its own springs to keep the room warm. It let its hands move faster when the window wanted more hours of light. It let its face crack when the wind blew too hard because a cracked face still tells time. A broken clock can still be right.

The dust watched all of this.

Dust is the memory of objects. It is what skin becomes when it is no longer touched. It is what laughter becomes when the room goes quiet. It settles on shoulders that used to shake with something close to joy and turns them grey. It does not ask permission. It does not apologize.

Time was in the room too. Time is always in the room. But time had grown confused. It no longer knew whether it was passing or standing still because the clock kept giving its hours away. Time would look at the window and then at the clock and feel something it had never felt before. Something like pity. Time does not usually pity anyone because time takes from everyone equally. But the clock was giving itself away before time could take anything. The clock was emptying itself. Time had nothing left to collect.