Building Dust
By Roger Li
Her hand grazed over the walls, snapping off haphazardly positioned pieces of peeling paint. The woman’s fingers stopped at an agglomeration of scars cut into the drywall, tracing each letter gingerly, like a blind woman reading Braille: L I A M R U L E S.
She smiled. He had been a rowdy child. The tip of her finger was quickly coated with a thin mixture of dust and graphite, accumulated over the house’s years of abandonment. The big, rectangular windows—which she peeked into from her old house across the street as a child—were now smashed. Her feet crunched on the shards of glass splattered all over the room.
Many others had been there. The antique vase with twirling roses meticulously placed above the fireplace was shattered; its pieces seemed to have formed a remarkable resemblance to a smiling face upon impact.
Soft moonlight spilled through the wavering curtains, revealing acres worth of empty space. The floor creaked longingly, crying for the weight it used to carry. She shivered. This wasn’t the home she and Liam used to play tag in. The yellow sofa in the corner where they made out when his parents left, now stained with unidentifiable substances, stood solemnly among the debris.
The woman stopped. She scooped up an old picture frame; the glass cover was smashed. A smile broke out onto her face. Soft tears hit the withering floor, pulling together grime, footsteps and memories. The back of her fingers gently removed dust that had built up over Liam’s face.
He looked just as dashing as he did 53 years ago. The woman pressed her cracked lips onto Liam’s freshly-pressed, tan, military uniform. She felt the heat of his cheeks and a tight squeeze around her waist from his embrace.
Footsteps clattered on the streets outside. She stumbled towards the back door. Before leaving, she stared at the photo, settling it carefully on the floor.
It needed to build more dust.
Roger Li is a high school student from the Chicagoland area. His works have been accepted into Journal & Topics, Versification, Kreaxxxion Review and Eskimo Pie Review, among other magazines. He is a hobby cyclist, and has an amazing husky named Wilson from Texas.