Dust: November Writing Prompt Responses

This month’s writing prompt was Dust. Here we showcase all the responses that were submitted.

Dust prompt: ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’ We’re made of it, we return to it. From stardust that sparkles to different powders that embellish our form, a marker of age, or even a concoction to liven our mood; dust is all around us, yet goes largely unnoticed.

Pure Modulations in Space and Time

for Amélie

Each time you say “Don’t go” it sends an arc through time

Like motes we’re in a wave of dying light

A bond forged from the first star, cast forever

Our atoms dance together, watch us rise



With the tide our years will play out to a rhythm

That each of us will let slip through our hands

I have stood upon the beach and felt the sinking

But in loving you I took part in the dance


Put your hand into the river, feel its fury

Wash over you and pull you in its wake

Where it leads I wish I had the words to guide you

In your memory hold on to this embrace


The glow today, the shadow of tomorrow

In the widening of stars our tale foretold

A love passed on from one down to another

Our atoms dance together, watch us rise

by Paul atten Ash (@NorthSeaNav Twitter, @north_sea_navigator Instagram)

Before I die

I lost my appetite
I lost my sleep
I lost my smile

I turned out a stranger for everyone

I want to be dust
I want to fade away
I want to say hello to my friends
Before I go too far away
Buy me some flowers
Before I die
Buy me a hot chocolate
Before I die

Tell me I'd be your favourite one
In another life
Before I die
Walk me to my home
And say hopefully
We'd meet again definitely
Before I die

by Inner Monologue (@inner__monologue__ Instagram)

when i wake up in my childhood bedroom

dust floats, hangs, almost heavenly in the sliver of sunlight coming in through
the broken, torn blinds. illuminates the air like the plastic prism does
a performance of rainbows and glitter at seven in the morning.
same dust, less pretty, blankets the typewriter from the thrift store
where i have written about writing and about murder too.
forgotten except for its smell, like nostalgia and zeal.
like the feeling of trying to stay up to finish
a painting or for the sake of a sleepover.
the thick air makes me sniffle. how many times
have i done that here? imagining and
recalling the loss of everyone
and everything like a cruel
game of prophecy or luck.
anger and fear float with
the stardust left from
first kisses and
birthdays. sticks
to my
soul.

by Kikyo (@fionakikyo Twitter, @_.kikyo.__ Instagram)

Through the veil

Amongst the floating specks, I notice you.
A drift of white around your shape:
They fall and land upon your head, your shoulders
Coating a layer you cannot detect.

You see me clearly. I see what lies around you.
My fingers tingle to reach out.
I keep them by my side.
As you move, the dust moves too, darting off- a mirror of your actions.
My eyes flit from one to another.
A bounty of individual dots.
Only I seem to observe.
You do not appear to care.

“Hello,” I say.

You walk through the dust towards me.

By Lucy O’Neill (@turningthepage08 Instagram & TikTok)

Stardust

I quite like the impermanence of dust. Though it may seem like nothing, to me, they are remnants; a sign that something was whole before.

When I was little, I used to look at the night sky a lot. We lived in a little house, and when it was dark, I would run outside and sit on the grass in the backyard. The day before, the rain had fallen heavily, leaving the grass smelling earthy and fragrant. The stars shined so bright, scattered across the black night, a resemblance of my artwork covered in glitter. Like the stars, the green and orange interstellar gas twirled like ribbons, and on that day there was a clump of purple dust, just in the middle of the sky, a coalescence of cool and warm debris.

I sat in silence, gazing at the glimmering view.

I remembered reading somewhere that everyone was once made of stardust, that billions of years ago, stars shone bright, burning themselves into falling elements that once made them. Scientists could tell how old the stars were just from their color.

“When I die, I’d like to be with the stars. I’ll look down on the world and leave a little piece of me,” I whispered.

My heart sank to my stomach as I thought deeper, recalling the information I discovered when reading the textbook. It made me wonder whether we will return to the sky once again when we die. I liked that fact, something that calmed my racing heart that our mistakes would no longer be, though I worried that as I turned to dust, all would be blown away and I’d leave with no trace.

Citation:
Lotzof, Kerry. “Are We Made of Stardust?” Natural History Museum.

by Solly Woo (@scllyvisual Instagram)

Last Words of a Dying Star

I imagined death would come like the whistling of a teapot—a low, rumbling hum steeping into a bird’s cry. Or the afterglow of an iron rod left in a furnace, pulsating like the wings of a milkweed butterfly, until it waned into a setting sun. I readied myself like a rubber band between finger and thumb, only to fling pathetically outwards. Death was quieter. Darker. It was my own. I’d say, hold me one last time, but you’d burn. I’d say, dream under my light once more, but this night is not but a seeming. I’d say, ritualize me for the poets believe that man is made of stardust, but I don’t think I’ll leave anything behind, no, not really.

by Areeba Zanub (Instagram: @motheatencurtain)

a boy named Venus

i.
I sometimes think that the world is asleep, but in the darkness of my attic room, I hear the grunge of my head. The punk rock is pulsating and nestled with rib-rot-stain in the crevice of my chest. My heart is a mansion with a mouth of an ogre that feasts on half-exhausted, half-genuine ballad. It twitches in the masochist hammer of somber love letters, affection deluded into tongue-smirking booty calls. My capillaries are thinned from the heavy flow of grind and school sovereign and
ii.
the boys have pitchfork for tongues, always undulating with the flare of venomous queer insults. They say faggot with a hard glottal sound, metallic with a melted twang, and they scald my skin like a mini-Salem trial; I am a witch misfit betwixt the blue-locker hallways of dopamine dogs. School is kindness repented, it is false niceties compromised with rifle words and silver-knuckled angst, and
iii.
in the classrooms, my hair is velvet and strawberry-cherished when the sunlight hits its knotted mane. The windows are my spotlight, the blackboard is my cinema for a queer-diverse cast. A sprinkle of chocolatey-mousse freckles dazzles the universe’s constellations; it’s a frizzled rivalry with the stars mapped on my nose bridge and chin. My cheeks are rotund apples with ember glow. My eyes are Ferrero Rocher orbs: golden flecks blinding like film strobes and paparazzi’s flash. In my daydreams, I am a concocted honey for the pop girls and the queen bees with their own royalty hive.
iv.
In the continuum of that other world, I don’t have to hide my pageant jeans with their rips, I don’t have to bundle up the cropped shirts with their apocalyptic politics. I don’t have to shove my kitten heels, my denim skirts with its acid bleach that look like my father’s gleaming baldness, and my rainbow flag with its proud fem brand beneath the secret floorboards under my bed, and
v.
In the ballet of my imagination splice, I am in the city with new platform boots. My eyes are not the after doused version of a dead fire, no fist imprints just below my cheekbones. My lips are protruding and thorny and scathing, not a territory ballooned with crack.
vi.
I am a beautiful human, queer faggot with no faded glow. My light is a 3d space that will splatter you into glitter. It’s full-on shimmer; not a sliver of hope that the boys love to pass around like football match -- a conquest for temporal victory pawed with lionglory.
vii.
And in the backyard that tastes like Antarctica, my mother is not yet dead. Probably, that’s why it’s the dawn’s wake behind the house. Father calls the spot haunted with Mom’s ghost and her rose garden. Her soul so voluptuous that a chunk of her, so big, so universal, was left on this cruel Earth with the shape of a unfurled fauna. Father says it’s her ghost that’s haunting the backyard, but I know it’s grief with its gigantic thighs. It’s grief with its hip dips and bones and teeth and void.
viii.
Father clucks at me for the jutted notes in my walk; a flair of gay, a feminine window to what my mother has bestowed. In the mornings, he leaves with his alcohol beers and heavy-inflated belly. He is an ellipsis that traces the possibility of misery, always expectant to the edging emptiness and rue.
ix.
And I slip my ballerina feet to my platform boots – it’s a simple rebellion against the hetero-awn of patriarchal-mansion. I kiss myself a lip gloss for shine, draw an eyeliner for gothic stark, and dab a bit of concealer right on the surface of violent incarceration.
x.
Father is a genocide of soul.
xi.
Mother always said my shadow is pink, and together, in her days without the cancer and tumors and chemo-slugs, we weaved our fingers to the ground. The dust of earth tattooed underneath
our nailbeds. Our hearts are tentacles of roses that couldn’t be breached apart. We snipped the green stems with their loveable thorns, sniffed the scent of something beautiful against the cage of grime, and in our duo, we recognized each other’s iridescence --- flailing bright, wanting to gasp for freedom.
xii.
I sometimes envy her ghost. Death became her savior in the crushing stage of darkness.
xiii.
And as the metal doors clang open, the air of courtyard is sewn with eyerolls and silent applause. The bubblegum Heathers chew their contempt, the boys with their shark-egos bite their bark. The insults melt and mellow like foundation flesh: a second skin against gravel
sunlight. Their words carry welded brunt, they shoot like arrow with assaulting somer-stories that mirror the same tragic fate of Icarus. They are immortalized in the form of dents within my scarlet-boxed metal heart, but their projectile insecurities melt like wax wings from the nuclear-potent of my sun.
xiv.
From the strobes of my gaze, I am a film star with halter glitter dresses and faggot font in blocky surrealism. I am Vogue-sque imprinted like a glossy brand on my collarbone. It is proud, tinted a spectrum of shades, and it glows like solar storms. My mother is in heaven with her clasped hand over her chest, smiling and mouthing the same words of wisdom and permissible authenticity when we were weaving roses in the backyard: ‘You will always be my son. I love you even if you are different.’
xv.
The wooden house, with its gaping doors and windows that didn’t trouble themselves for warmth, becomes a noir grain. The picture slips like glitter sands within the folds of my memory.
xvi.
In my future, I see metamorphosis, clandestine love, and illicit fire finally being permitted to burn in all its ferociousness. I have no purple skies under my eyes, no obsidian tattoo of aggression on my cheekbones. I am shining, I am blinding the whole world with my effervescence. I am a star of my own queerness. My hair is a tangled knot of aquamarine waves, dotted with wreath of flowers that
accentuate my brown skin. I am queer, I am kissing a boy under mirrorball lights, and I am an endless metamorphosis.
But for now, I am gonna pay my rent of hellscape. But soon, and soon is near, I am gonna be lavishing in queer haven. Glitter and all stardust in my eyes.

by Dan Aries Amian (@heatherishz Instagram)

Narcissus Lives

Green daffodils turn
Rock to dust, dust to mountain
The mind hollow stone

by Crystal Antonace (illfollowthe.sun Instagram)

When Winter Comes Slowly

Some years, winter comes slowly. A last blast of summer in September lets you eek a few more weeks out of dresses and sandals before the time comes to shake out sweaters, assess them for bobbles, and yank dusty boots from the back of the cupboard. Then autumn lingers and leaves cling to trees despite the breeze growing longer. Keener. The grey river rises quietly and you realise it’s November and you’ve managed this long without bothering with a proper coat. If you look up, there’s still colour – copper in the treetops, indigo edging the sky, the palest blush left in the hydrangea – and you catch the first murmuration of starlings as the sun sinks low.

Dust-light streams in the kitchen on this, the first wintry day. I’ve come to know I have my mother’s hands. So much of her I recognise in my hands; the colour of the skin, thickness of fingers, pattern of indents at the knuckles when I clench my fist. The saggy folds appearing when I straighten my fingers again. Nails just reaching the fingertip, each one curving to a quiet oval, the faintest line of grime beneath them by the end of the day, bearing witness to laundry, cooking, and a stint in the garden shifting pelargonium to protect them from frosts and fishing out leaves blown behind the potted olive tree. There is a dryness to my hands I cannot conquer, no matter how much cream I smother on them last thing at night, before I go to sleep, or when I remember the little bottle I keep, like she did, at the kitchen sink. The ridges on the nails need smoothing. Criss-crossing lines on the palms I cannot fathom. The gentle swell of blue-green veins.

The sun is low now, the light fading. The last leaf on the cherry tree outside flutters, joyful, as if it is content to be last. As if it knows winter comes slowly, and any day now a gust will take it flittering down to earth. To dust.

by Leanne Simmons (@leannesimmonswriting Instagram)

Cold Coffee Covered in Stars

The stories on my laptop are gathering dust. I sit and stare at empty screens, wondering how I used to enjoy late night writing. I miss you here, cheering me on in the evenings. Now the ticking of the old clock is all I can focus on in an otherwise silent room.  

The stories in my notebooks are gathering dust, too. I glance over at them, piled high on my desk and not a single one completed. I open one we had scribbled in together. I wonder if you can see all these empty pages of mine. 

The memories in my skull are gathering dust. I worry I will forget the things I once had memorised. I look away from my laptop. The coffee beside me has long since lost its steam. I reach for it anyway. The mug is not the most aesthetic of things, you had panicked on a business trip and bought it for me as a gift. The mug is navy, chipped at the top and decorated in stars that are all painted poorly. I love it. 

As I take a sip, I no longer feel quite so alone in my apartment. The dust in my mind shifts to stardust and I manage to type a few lines on my open document. I know this feeling is fleeting, and soon I will occupy my empty galaxy again. But for now, the cold coffee covered in stars reminds me of you, and I have my partner with me for this writing session once more. 

by Eva McLean (@evamcleanarts on Instagram)