THE DUST
The Dust is a short story that was shortlisted for the Geelong ‘Finest 500’ Prize, 2025, and is a metaphorical, hybrid prose-and-poetry piece exploring the secondary emotions of trauma.
We came from the dust. A world of brown deserts, wastelands and barrens, unfit for life. Then, from great, miraculous misfortune, sprang a paradise whose wonder the universe had never known. But what perfection can ever last?
The brown stretches from beneath my feet to horizons far, decorated only by dark smears and dead things. All the plants have been ripped free, leaving behind only dried roots and dusty rocks. I see myself in this stained dirt, forced to recover from something it never should have suffered.
Some people make a grand romance out of their scars. They view them as an ode to tribulation, a souvenir of survival. They bear them as a warning to foes and a testament to their resilience. Anything to draw meaning from suffering undeserved.
I have always hated mine. All they are to me is a reminder that it happened, and it changed me. Things will never be the same, and I am lesser for it.
Does losing hope still count as learning? Does succumbing to fury still count as feeling?
I know there is little value to bemoaning the obvious, to adding another sullen cry to the cacophony of empty noise, but still I paint these letters in the hope they can become something more. Is that not art, after all?
I step forward, and the stifling breeze covers my footprints immediately. The dead horizon has come no closer.
Our home never asked for us to choke its seas with plastic, fill its skies with smoke, and starve its people of hope. It never asked we tear the atom, ignite the nucleus, or poison the very fabric of carbon life with the sting of radiation.
It created us, and we repaid it the only way we knew how.
I take another step, ignoring the scratch in my throat and grit in my eyes.
To the dust we will return. It’s only a matter of time.
I never asked for my trauma, I never grew from my pain.
Like a plant starved of water, I never knew it could rain.
And so the drought spread, while all the seas rose,
In heated torment we fell into these throes,
Blindly, routinely, the same paths were taken,
So we could dance with the ghosts of the answers forsaken,
And when at last the sun dies with a shattering spark,
We’ll gladly fall into the gathering dark.
© J.S.Harman.
All rights reserved to the original author and publisher, J.S.Harman.
All writing featured is original content created without the use of generative AI or language learning models. This author expressly prohibits this publication to be used in any way, shape or form to train artificial intelligence technologies or language learning models.
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