If you spend your days
wandering through empty space,
blown from one patch of air
to the next,
aimless like the billions
of other specks scraping past each other
in their day-to-day routines,
sadness dripping with each movement
and has been dripping
from the moment you came into existence,
no talent whatsoever,
then you are a particle of dust.

You know you are not Helium in a balloon
rising above the grinning toddler’s face
as he clutches onto the ribbon
of the prize he won at the carnival,
nor the laughing gas putting an anxious
heart-surgery patient to sleep.
You cry to think you are not even
the molecule of water
helping relieve the jogger’s thirst.

You are merely a particle of dust.

But let us acknowledge
the Helium, laughing gas, and others
with dignity, be glad we are not
the monoxide from the fireplace
poisoning a sleeping man
or any of their kind.
Let us fill up space,
and be blown around
shamelessly

as particles belonging
to the universe.