You hold your head high

on a neck stiff with the starch of arrogance;

you may live at an elevated altitude,

but your collar is as blue in the shade as any other,

your substance is as much dust as mine.

If you will own your weaknesses,

embrace the molecules

which bleed when torn,

perhaps –

perhaps our souls could

fill the same sea,

our waves could curl on distant shores

and make of foreign pebbles

a new form of

dust.