Dust

Old houses have the most

It ticks out of the walls
like seconds

Arrogant tourists, attracting
only their own
kind

Speaking loudly in corners
under tables, beds

Whichever way the wind
happens to blow

It’s not the rest of the world we track in

It s us
When the heater is on

When we rub
moving from room to room
this simple air up
against
this simple, worn-out, top layer of wall

The one who cleans, knows:

it’s what
you could order your life
around:

getting dressed to eat breakfast
for strength to finish the cleaning in time to shop
for clothes to wear to work to earn money
for food to eat
for strength to wash the dishes
to wash the clothes to wear to bed to get enough rest
to get the cleaning done

Ah, to clean and pretend it was nothing

Ah, in their house
to let them pretend it was nothing

Ah, to pretend to each other
you aren’t
pretending at all

Facing it:

“What did you do today?”
Nothing

“What can you show for it?”
Absence

Days I was in school
Mother cleaning everything we didn’t
do Saturdays:

shelves where clean
dishes went, insides of windows I never
saw anyone touch

light bulbs on ceilings, tops
of doorframes, windowframes, curtain rods
backs of every last picture on the wall

Dust wouldn’t be
dust forever

It mixes with something when no one
not even TV is looking

Indiscriminate as sin
it clings
greaselike
to cracks between baseboard and floor, to bathroom walls, kitchen walls
doors of cupboards, ceilings, cracks
around door knobs, stove knobs, faucets, chrome the length
of the sink, of the stove, of the edge
of anger

The sponge of our knowledge useless against it

Mother, years it took me to guess
you knew all this

Your Saturday helper dusting her
own room, living room, dining room, den

All this she hadn’t expected
to notice
to care about

Ever

It ticks out of the walls
like lives
before us

The walls won’t
hold them
any more.