i’m sitting here in the dark again and the hum of the freezer is the only thing talking to me. it’s 2:14 am. this is probably stupid to even type out but my chest feels like it’s full of wet cement tonight and i can't get a full breath in. i look at my hands under the desk lamp and they’re shaking just a little bit. thin skin, spots starting to show up like tea stains on an old tablecloth. these hands have spent forty years doing things and for the last six they’ve been hovering over bits of dust. ancient dirt. stuff from the pleistocene or whatever name they want to give it this week. it’s just dirt. gray and dry and older than god and completely and UTTERLY useless to anyone who has to pay a heating bill. the samples came in these little plastic tubes last week. tray 4-B. i have to count the grains. i have to sort them. silica and silt and dead things and salt. just salt. i’ve spent thousands of hours looking at these grains under a lens that costs more than my first three cars combined. i’m almost sixty. most people my age are thinking about where they’re going to fish or how to fix the porch but i’m worrying about the mineral density of a hole in the ground that hasn't seen the sun in ten thousand years. it feels like i’ve committed some kind of crime. like i’ve stolen a whole life and traded it for a jar of sand. my father worked for the city. he fixed the water pipes under the streets. he could point at a neighborhood and say i kept those people dry. i stopped that leak. he had calluses that felt like tree bark. real work. work you could touch. he’d come home smelling like copper and sweat and the world made sense. i come home smelling like bleach and nothing. just the absence of everything. i look at these spreadsheets and i see numbers that don't mean a thing to anybody who has to worry about the price of eggs. it’s a lie i tell myself at 9 am that this MATTERS. that some kid in a hundred years is going to read my name in a footnote and it’ll make their life better. it won't. it’s just paper. it’s just more dust. i’m supposed to be finishing this big study. the final one. the one that gets me the letters after my name. but i look at the samples and i just see the years i didn't go to the lake. the birthdays i spent in the climate-controlled room because the samples might degrade if i left. the mortgage is almost paid but for what. a house i only sleep in. a kitchen where the stove is still clean because i’m always eating a sandwich over a lab notebook. i look at the younger kids in the lab, the twenty-somethings with their bright eyes, and i want to grab them by the shoulders. i want to tell them to go outside and get some real mud on their boots. but i don't. i just show them how to calibrate the sensor. this is the part that’s hard to say. i think i hate it. i think i’ve hated it for a long time but i was too scared to stop because the pay was steady and the benefits were okay and i didn't know how to do anything else. i’m a specialized tool. a very expensive, very narrow screwdriver that only works on one kind of screw that doesn't even hold anything together. it’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things but it feels like i’m drowning in a puddle. i’ve spent my whole life becoming an expert on something that doesn't have a heartbeat. vials. slides. tweezers. the sharp smell of the cleaning alcohol. the way the light reflects off the steel table. my back hurting. the mortgage statement on the kitchen table at home. the silence of my kids when i try to explain what i do. they just nod and look at their phones. they don't get it and why should they. it’s not real. it’s all just theory and tiny little fragments of a world that’s already gone. i’m a ghost studying ghosts. some nights i want to take the whole tray of samples—all those years of collecting and labeling and Drying—and just walk out to the parking lot and dump them in the grass. give them back to the wind. let the rain wash them into the gutter where they can actually be part of the world again. imagine the look on the dean’s face. it’s a stupid thought. i’d lose my pension. i’d lose everything. so i just sit here and i click the mouse and i record the data. 0.04 percent magnesium. 0.02 percent carbon. i'm tired. not the kind of tired you can sleep off. it’s the kind that’s in your bones. i’m approaching the end of the line and my legacy is a shelf of binders in a basement that nobody visits. i just wanted someone to tell me it wasn't a waste. i wanted to feel like i was building a bridge or even just digging a ditch that led somewhere. instead i’m just here in the white light. counting. always counting. and the clock on the wall just keeps ticking and it sounds like a hammer hitting a nail into a coffin i built myself out of ancient, dry earth. i'm just waiting for the sun to come up so i can pretend it’s all okay for one more day. one more day of looking at the dust.