skin

Sitting on the train
I notice the motes of dust, illuminated in the
light,
follow their own trajectory, flitting between
the legs of swaying commuters.
The dust motes are the commuters, as most
particles of dust are skin cells, ejected from
the derma by friction or the elements.
It seemed as though the people on the
train were evaporating, one dust particle at a
time.
Little chunks of us, falling off.
The offset of this is the production of more
skin cells, an ongoing process. The day that
this process stops, they lock us in a box and
put us back where we came from.
This dust I see caught in the morning sunlight
is all we have after we go into the box.
Then I thought of the mop of a CTA cleaner,
wiping us into a bucket with bleach and
dirty melted snow and mud.



23rd Feb '09