She feels like dust

personified for the first time

she opens her eyes

slowly, breaking the chrysalises of dirt crusted on the ridges of her eyelids, pieces of mire crumbling and rolling like boulders off the curves of her shoulders, skipping into oblivion,

she purses my lips,

as her grey tongue emerges to dampen the precipice.

she arches her back, her spine sending a river of cracks quaking across the broad of her back, the shell of her skin sending debris into the air to be caught up in the sunlight

she breathes in

her lungs stinging as dusty air swirls like a hurricane, awakening the soot from the crevices of her bones,

she holds it for a moment

cherishing it though it is painful to hold in her the brittle fingers of her ribs, her lungs scraping against her cage walls like a concrete jungle

a hoarse whisper escapes her

riding the whirlwind of things lost in the eye of the storm, as her chilled breathe swirls amidst  particles of earth and cobweb  floating out of her mouth

like an old dragon may smoke a pipe

she is fractured

but alive