Damages: Part Five – Dust

It’s not debris. It’s what’s left when there’s no one left to name it.

Dust is quiet.
It settles.

You don’t hear it coming… but one day, you breathe it in,
and realize the room has been coated in grief for years.

Dust is what follows rot.
It’s not the damage itself.
It’s what the damage leaves behind after it finishes eating.

This album has dust in every corner.
Moments I thought I’d processed.
Things I let go of…
but never really cleaned up after.

Dust lives in the memory that no longer hurts,
but still shows up in your lungs.
It’s in the scent of someone who hasn’t been near you in a decade…
in the flicker of a hallway light that hits just like the one from childhood.
It doesn’t collapse you… it settles on you
until your breath gets shorter… your words slower… your tone more bitter than you meant.

Dust… in my world… is the concept that everything you have been
settles on everything you have become.
It’s the seeds of rot that is yet to be.

On Damages, dust is everywhere.
In the soft hiss of the guitar amp left running.
In the spaces between vocal takes — breaths I didn’t cut out, clicks I didn’t erase.
In the way the reverb sometimes bleeds too long… not by mistake, but by design.
Because some things should linger.
Some things should stick to your skin.

Dust is what happens when you’ve already survived the collapse,
but haven’t found a way to start over.
It’s survival without clarity.
Persistence without relief.
It’s what coats the surface of everything you try to build on top of pain.

Synesthetically, dust is the most deceptive presence.
It’s soft… but it coats.
It’s light… but it changes the taste of everything underneath.
It’s the flavor of grief you don’t name anymore.
The pale gray-blue haze that makes everything look tired.
The air texture that turns clean breath into weight.

If rot is the thing that changes your structure,
dust is what keeps you from rebuilding.

You can clean it… but it always comes back.
Because the source is still somewhere inside you.