Dust

I have to protect myself from you, from the hurt you might do to me. I know you won’t mean it, but you’ll do it. I know you have no idea that anyone could be so easily hurt, least of all me - because you know me, or so you think. You think you know every little aspect of me, every little thing to avoid, to sidestep so that I don’t crumple in your hands like a dried autumn leaf and turn to dust in front of your eyes. But what you don’t realise is that I’m already dust inside and each time you say the thoughtless things you do, behave in the thoughtless ways you do, that little pile of dust just gets bigger, and the bigger it gets the more it obscures me from you. Soon that dust is going to get so thick that you’ll never penetrate it and I won’t blow it away because it insulates me, it removes me from all that you do to me. It’s like the dust in the old lagging from the boiler, it keeps me warm inside and there you are outside in the cold, and I just can’t let you in any more.