#Brussels
The day after the attacks, dust was in the air.
Dust you did not notice at first, but wondered
why the air was pink and heavy,
why it hurt to breathe.
Then someone said, “Look, there,”
and you looked.
Cars on the street sides coated
like a first-gasp-of-winter snowfall of red.
Like icing sugar
People writing with their fingers things like
Welcome refugees or
Hooligans but never
Wash me.
When the light came, the winds changed,
and so came the dust.
A haze of not-quite darkness
All the more threatening than the night.
Pressure in your chest
Slow poison every breath
Yet poison you did not notice until someone else pointed it out.
And then you saw the news
And then it all seemed fitting.
Some storm god reminding you:
These times are dark
The world is not this way
That it hadn’t been this way for a good, long while.
Numb, you stood thinking
about a sober whisper in a drunken night
That years ago
a friend breathed in your ear:
These are the new dark ages and
we will not live to see the renaissance.
Because in Greece it is known:
The South Wind carries with him the sands of the Sahara
He chokes the air with the desert.
It has been known since before the dark ages of Homer
When they gave the wind his name.
