Dust Pile Revelation It’s only when you sweep that you watch as craters and cracks resurrect. Wood varnish freckling ravenous whitecaps on the cypress-planked deep. Clippings of weeds banished from the law by calloused spaces between toes. The rot-caked ghosts of paws, decomposed residue of potlucks cowering under every pall of cabinetry. It’s only when you sweep that You leer with leniency at hoarders. Absently arrogant for unnoticed days, piling into disregarded weeks. The unchanged soot, always swelling. Like weekends slipped by unloved dimmed by the complacency of your hangover Saturday imperfections obligated to be sufferable by Sunday. Or maybe even homely. Settling down with the deserted silt and mire spoused and then deserted by shoe soles. Complacent, banal marriage. Floorboards and filth. For better until they realize it’s worse. It’s only when I sweep that I abhor. Self-contented oblivion severed. Unblinded by my broom.
Ava Passehl ‘22
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