Dust--An Ode to Spring

  Luke liked to throw the windows wide open on the first warm day of Spring. As soon as he would leave for work, Bonnie would go through the house and close them. She would get out her cleaning supplies and try to rid the house of the pollen. The yellow grit covered every surface.
  Bonnie would mutter unkind things about Luke under her breath as she wiped down the windowsills. She knew both the griping and the wiping were futile because Luke would open the windows again as soon as he got home, and they would argue about the dust.
  The Spring day when Bonnie realized she was pregnant, Luke didn't open the windows. "You can run the air if you like," he said, kissing her goodbye as she rested her forehead on the toilet seat. Bonnie was touched--for all of ten seconds. She figured his thoughtfulness wouldn't last much longer than pollen season.
  It seemed stupid to argue about something as small and fleeting as dust. Bonnie thought about the baby, who was probably no bigger than a grain of dust, who was causing her all this misery. She thought about Luke who seemed to float from job to job like the drifting pollen. She thought about the dust in her father's urn at the VA cemetery. Bonnie hoped the baby was a boy so she could name him after her father, but she knew Luke wanted a girl.
  It seemed like minutiae in the larger scheme of things. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
  Bonnie's thoughts drifted like dust as she managed to get to her feet. She washed her face at the sink and decided she felt too horrible to wage war on yellow dust that day.