The cigarette dangling from his lips couldn’t have burned fast enough: he was nervous about something, but wouldn’t tell me. Sure enough, he spoke, out of a small opening at the corner of his lips where they were not pursed around the cylinder of the cigarette, emitting the words in rings and threads of smoke, sometimes threads with rings ringing them or rings with cords twisted round them. But his words carried neither courage nor honesty, they were his slipshod shack he built against the winds and threatening waters or dust of some storm outside, the storm that bade him hide with whatever means he could find. Neither courage nor honesty; still, there was courage in what he said, a courage to the point of faith, a faith in the living power of words, even lying words, of their believing, or hoping, with a daring hope, that they could make one like me, one so careful around words, to come to believe them, as much as I believed that there was smoke puffing out from the opening at the corner of his lips while he spoke, as much as I believed, as I would claim to know because I would infer, that where there is smoke there is fire. He had courage enough to believe in his fire and the blunt opacity of his smoke, when really I could see right through it all.
Love the Dust 