[Poem-a-Week] dust, on dust by Anna Kate Vaughan

can you see through me to my skeleton
can you hold my bare bones with your eyes
will you bruise my trachea too
or are your hands withering away like mine
you tell me it won't hurt one bit
and i just smile
or try to
nothing hurts me anymore.
i have a thousand years of dust
aching in me
choking out all else.

a man convinced me 
once
that i still possessed the room for a little love
and he cleared out a tiny corner 
of the space between my lungs and sat there 
holding the darkness between his teeth for a good while

it consumed him.

i consumed him
gently
like a tree eating a dead thing.

to dust you will return.

but if i am already dust, what then?
have i returned?

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Anna Kate Vaughan is a Korean American poet and artist based in Texas. She is currently a student at Trinity University, studying Psychology and Theatre. Anna Kate has competed in poetry and Shakespeare festivals, and also enjoys storytelling through the performing arts. She has been published in the first anthology of Campfire Poets, Campfire One, curated by Maria Giesbrecht, and you can follow her work at @poemsbyannakate on Instagram.

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