Article and Art by Gemma Marx
Dust collects in the places you forget.
The things you cease to touch, to look at.
His face is now dusty, obscured by time.
Dust collects when you are careless.
Underneath the radiator in your room and in the corners of ceilings.
The places you avert your eyes from.
Two nights ago you started a new puzzle.
You got it at a thrift store last year and it has been hidden (sitting) under Shira and Anna’s coffee table since.
Shira started it at one point, and then gave up.
When you began the puzzle two nights ago thick dust coated each piece.
Though covered by a lid the dust appeared like mice in a cupboard, snaking through tiny passageways, reaching and grabbing.
Clinging on.
Dust has no care for boundaries nor borders. It will not listen to you when you ask it nicely to please leave or when you scream and howl at it to go.
It is a reminder
Of your indelicacy, your carelessness.
Of what you have forsaken.
Like a hoarder, incapable of throwing away their leftovers, allowing them to linger and fester and eventually grow mold, you have allowed certain things to fall to the wayside.
Unwilling to throw them away altogether, they sit and the dust accumulates.
You pretend not to notice the cobwebs building in the corner of your ceilings, the texts you’ve failed to respond to.
The old tote bag he made for you is now crumpled at the back of a shelf. You thought you would eventually mend the burnt hole in the center of it, but it has become too painful to pick up so there it remains,
crumpled,
ignored,
its white canvas becoming grey.
The presence of dust gives you a choice. You can blow on it, make all the particles fly up and scatter (some onto your face). You can get a wet wash cloth and gently pick up every last speck. You can throw it away entirely.
Or you can leave it.
This may come as a surprise, but sometimes you have to let it lie. Some things are meant to be cloaked by time, to be obscured from clarity.
Some things you must allow to accumulate dust until they are taken over completely.
Until it disappears and you are left only with piles of dust.
It is not always possible to identify something as trash; when you hold it in your hands, to your chest, it still has value, so you cannot yet part with it.
I have a bad habit of blowing the dust, sending motes flying into the air, into my lungs obstructing my breathing, sending me into fits of coughing.
I am not good at letting things lie.
This is what I tell myself, anyway, when I try to uncover what is old.
I can’t help it,
I am sensitive.
I have the memory of an elephant and cannot let things be.
An archeologist of my own remains, I find a new thing to dig up every few months.
They arrive in the form of a dream while I sleep:
A forgotten friendship from 6th grade, the face of a lover who should be left in the past, a thoughtless comment I made to my roommate, that one big fight I had with my brother, the selfish decision I made in 2nd grade, the friend’s secret I spread in middle school.
I wake and pick up my tools, scour the crevices of my room, and dust off the dirt that’s collected under planters, the loose threads from pants I have hemmed, the strips of magazines I have cut, the stems of apples discarded late at night, pieces of dried contact lenses, and get to work.
I keep myself up all night and all day, going over every detail.
I polish the memory until, for a moment, it shines brightly, as though no time has passed.
I torment myself, unable to let go, to give up.
It becomes my fault, and I must make it right.
I end up with debris in my lungs, gasping for breath,
particles in my eyes, bringing tears to the surface.
I remember why the thing had dust on it to begin with.
And I remember that no matter how diligently I work, the dust will find its way back.
It will reach and grab through any airway.
It never goes where I want it to, anyway.
The dust finds its way back in through pinholes and razor thin cracks. It refuses to be contained or manipulated or controlled.
The things you wish that it would cover, hide from your view,
it does not.
The things you spend countless hours brushing with one of those pink puffy brushes, or even a rough bristle brush, on the other hand, never seem to reveal themselves.
It is rarely ever a good idea.
The dust always returns.
I regret most of the digs I have participated in. People get hurt, most often myself. The ethics are dodgy. Some things are meant to remain buried, hidden in the darkness of time. Allowed to be buried under layers of small particles, so enshrouded that it is safe from my clawing hands.
The dust protects me from myself.
I never did finish the puzzle.
It was too difficult, the pieces of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” too similar for my brain to fit together.
I have hidden it from myself again, not wishing to be confronted by my dusty failure every time I am in front of the coffee table.
I have shoved it under the couch; I am trying to forget it.
But I know that one day while I am searching for a missing cat toy, I will see the box and be confronted by the memory of what I could not finish.