When they learned finally to discern the quiet
from the dead they decided I was the latter.
“But this phone book, these dusty letters,” I said.
“The spirit visits me on foot, calls me by name.”
“The dust doesn’t fathom or boast,” they replied,
“and its testimony, we assure you, is certain.”
(I already regretted the thing about “the spirit,”
fearing it made me seem dead.) “Of course, Sirs,”
I stammered, “but I have no business with dust,
or dust is beside the point, or I’ve mistaken...”
How’d it come to this? What wayward logic
had my life followed? What cracked Gospel
had left me so holy I was almost nothing?
I began again to speak but was cut off.
“Sir, or Mam, or whoever––
These letters, your petition, your gushy
inchoate scrawl: All dust.”
ECHO ASSOCIATION is an American producer of literature and commentary. An essay, "The Female Ephebe," ran in Tourniquet Review last year.