Just Dust

• Phoebe Coates, Grade 6
• Poetry
• 2011

I wake up on dust
No bed, no blanket, just dust
I wake up every morning with an aching hole in my stomach where my family should be, it’s filled with cold hard, dry dust.
Every breath I take claws at my throat and fills my lungs with dust.
Every day reaches toward me, a bony hand pulling me back into my living nightmare.
I own dust
All I have is powdery, dirty, ungrateful dust
It’s the hard, hot cracked ground I work on, It’s what I work for; dust
Dust crawls down my skin like a shiver and sticks in my eyes, nose and mouth
That is dust’s gift to me, making me miserable
My tattered clothes are my soul that dust took away
The lonely grain of rice I had for breakfast was covered in dust, a piece of hope covered in despair
The flesh and bone I have left is filled with this gut wrenching dust
In some ways we are similar dust and I, unloved unappreciated and neglected
This morning I don’t wake up to dust
I am just dust.