“Dust Almost Enough”

Alan Pham, English writing senior

I’ve waited ten months.
for what, I can’t be sure anymore.
I guess a lot of things, used to be
just her face, in profile,
that’s all I could get. Then
the hem blowing dust in my direction,
her shadow cast on my foot.
Reach—no.
Satisfied for a while but bound to get
greedy (how could you not when it never stopped
coming but it never came) sometimes
I stare so hard, oblivious
wind blowing debris across the filter
fleeting peripherals of everything becoming
hopes unexpected (stop expecting).
My eye itches, I want to scratch it but it’d only get worse,
so much dust crouched in moist backs of hands,
I scratch anyway. Can’t complain since I put
myself here—well, at first but not anymore.
It’s the endless road gives no choice but
this rippling sea of gravel that I slowly collect
grain by itchy grain stinging whites,
the trance of another mile-long journey
unfurling in a second every thousandth of a second.
I wonder how many days it’d take
to soak up all the dust.
Maybe then she’d walk on me.
I have stay at least
until the fabric flaps at the bend (blue today?
maybe the sunflowers),
the whip that crashes the dust
I need.