“You fall off your fence, buddy?”

I laid there, breathing in the chalky dust. In some last stubborn act, my arm was still looped across the rough bottom rung.

The crackling of my dusty gloves were louder then I ever would’ve thought right now.

“Yeah, somethin’ like that.”

He leaned over his fence, muddy sweat filtering through the stiff grains of his beard like the process of shifting. “Gonna get up?”

I sunk my head back into the greasy, untangled mop beneath my skull and closed my burning eyes. “Maybe.”

He flicked a heavy glob of mud from the cleft of his chin, “You’re still on about the ashes thing, ain’t you?”

“Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust.” I quote, voice dry and bitter. “You get to burn and twist off in papery molten capes towards the sky.”

The mud strikes a clump of her hair. “So, Dust – how you doin’ with that then?”

I hunched forward, lifting my chin to draw my eyes towards the dark skies above. The movement revealed the pale ribbons of pasty flesh between each ring of soot on my skinny neck. “Dust.” I whispered, again, pushing away from the fence and into the ragged terrain.

“It was never Dust to Ashes.”

I walk away from him now, the earth’s heartbeat lancing up through the dry soil to strike me as yet another artery for substance. It’s supposed to hurt a little more than this, but nothing…

After all, I am Dust.