Midwestern Gothic

i’ve become dust in the wind. a gate they all pass through, pass through to become who they really are. sifting sands come and go and here i am, quietly stoic in the desert, feet supplanted and hardly willing and able to move. they strike and still i stand. they climb up on me and i give them a boost. they stand triumphant at the top, looking onto the horizon, having tethered my battered and beaten body to get there, surveying the horizon. here they are, they declare, shoving me further into the fissure they have dug. and then, in the distance, a rider comes and sweeps them away and i, still standing, cracked and peeling in parts, the sand drifting up and around me in little eddies, have again become dust in the wind.