Dust

I just managed to slip through traffic on my way to work. I wove through a pack moving ten below the speed limit and broke out into the freedom of the empty road, cruising along at twenty over. The sun beat on me through the windshield from overhead, and the wind beat on me from the open windows to my sides.

I stuck my hand out the window, and imagined that the wind would erode me into a pile of dust, and that my dust would then become part of some vast array of sand dunes. That I would erode into nothing, that nothing of me would matter, that nothing of mine would be kept, not my clothes, not my name, and definitely not my hair. I looked into my rear-view mirror and saw nothing but a pile of dust and bones. Absolutely nothing.

The dust then pummeled my poor exposed hand, exclaiming, “Do you think of us nothing? We’ll show you nothing! Do you have no respect for what once was? Do you not understand that what once was is what will soon be?”

I pulled my hand back inside, retreating from my cruel assailant, and looked inward. I must be more than flesh, for what is flesh other than moistened dust? And I must be more than dust, for what is dust other than embodied nothing? My appendages, numbered five (four limbs and a head), extend outward from my center, and my four limbs themselves have five appendages (four fingers and a thumb, or four toes and a big toe). But the sum of parts alone cannot make me. There must be something more!

Must there? As I neared my place of work, I began to peer forward in time towards what would be my day, and what did I see? I saw yesterday, and the day before that, and a hundred other previous days, but I also saw tomorrow, and the day after that, and a thousand other future days. And then I saw more of yesterdays, and more of tomorrows, but these were not my days, they were the days of other poor souls like mine, enlimbed flesh, living the exact same days as I did, do, and will. It takes a lot of dust to make a desert.

I, dreading my imminent arrival at the office, foolishly decided to heavy my foot on the gas pedal, quickening my steed towards the highway exit. Just as my navigation gave the notification to merge right in a quarter mile, my car catastrophically disassembled into a hundred individual pieces all around me. I flew forward, still buckled in my seat, as every single component of what was previously a car lay on the beltway behind me. My trajectory took me into a concrete barrier at about 85 miles an hour. On impact, I exploded into a cloud of dust and blew away into the wind, my clothes left neatly folded on the shoulder of the highway. Absolutely nothing.