The People Of The Dust
We are the people of the dust, for that is what They call us–yet, many times have They tried to take us from it. We do not wish to be taken. This is where we belong. We gorge ourselves upon perceived iniquity, and thus we are grotesque creatures. We do not see these imperfections as such, however. We celebrate them and are connected through them. We commit many transgressions in Their eyes, the eyes of the Others. We love, yet we do not love whom we should love. Our skin is not the color that skin should be, and our bones are shaped wrong. We do not fit most perfectly into our bodies. We do not believe what must be believed. We know these things, for They have told us. At first, we did not believe. We did not want to believe, for our ways were so ingrained in our lives, we could not believe. Thus, we turned our ears against the Others. Now, we are the people of the dust. We believe that They have stopped looking upon us as people and more as fiends. We are amalgams of wickedness. Yet, we do not act wicked. What wickedness we commit is born of sapient inadequacy and not our intrinsic turpitude.
After the Others stopped looking upon us as humans, we began to agree. We know we are not people, for people are not treated as the dust. We do need this dust. We use it to paint our skin and hide our faces from Them. Sometimes, They see us. Sometimes, we are invisible. When we are not, the Others look at us and say we are monsters. We are freaks. We are abominations of nature because the Others have told us this. We must believe Them, for They are the only truths we know. We are lost, and in our dementia we have founded homes in the dust. We live there, yet our bodies live among the Others. Many times has a person of the dust so far separated mind from body, due to venomous tongues and insidious voices, that the mind dies. When the body follows, the Others have a name for this. We do not dare speak the word, for it is as macabre and sordid as our blackest hedonism.
We are the people of the dust, for that is what They call us. We are not mysterious. We could have been the Others. Once, we were the Others. Now, we are not. We do not speak with lofty tongues, nor do we prance with elegant gait. In fact, some say we still are the Others. Truly, one must decide, for each day we walk among the Others as openly and quietly as They. We are pallid, pained, provoked, and patronized creatures. Our eyes are made of our dust, and the Others know this. We are as useless as dust-collecting furniture. We know this, for They have told us it is true.
Mathew is a junior in high school. He enjoys writing, learning languages, art, music, and more. His favorite thing about writing is that he can create new things with different combinations of words. Each word has its own meaning, its own shape.
Photo credit: NOAA/DoC; from NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS) Collection