Mass

The only constant I believe in is dust.

You’ll say, of course, that dust isn’t a constant. What about the speed of light,
for example, the way gravity tugs at mass, Jesus Christ?

Hear me out, though: dust is everywhere. The stuff is in space.
When I was nine my mom pulled out this shiny book and read to me

about comets. Clouds of dust on fire, playing musical chairs
up there for the hell of it. And if you’ve ever opened your eyes

in church when you weren’t supposed to, you’ve seen the same dust spinning
up and down in front of the window, just as tired of sitting still

as you are. Gravity’s got nothing on that dust. It doesn’t care whether
your eyes are open when they should be shut, whether

the priest has been going on for ten minutes already, whether
some comet just got too close to the sun and burst into billions of tiny particles 

that are still floating, somewhere, on their own.