ASHES
It was impossible for you
to collect dust in your living.
Now your whirlwind years of youth
have settled here on earth.
Now you sit somewhere,
in a vial made of plastic.
Perched in a cupboard,
gathering particles.
You have no grave to turn in
at the thought of this.
Cerebrally unforgotten,
engraved in our lifelines.
But we forget that these ashes
are the most tangible remnants of you
We remember you
in a hundred more ways than dust.
Your body is still,
sifted down to a fine and peculiar grain.
Your soul is anything but dormant,
alive and lifted up.
I’ve said it over the years,
gently I probe our parents,
we need to scatter you,
in all the places you loved.
In all the ways of letting go,
this is the last.
REFLECT/DEFLECT
Wide eyed
and birdlike,
you look at me.
Searching upwards,
graze my neck
with your needlepoint fingertips.
Nails dig into my temple
trying to tug out the part of me
that can’t look away,
trying to separate the two of us
with the glass intact.
You could replace my collarbones
with fish bones
and I would still be strong.
Wind my spine around your fingers
and I would still stand tall.
Here is the only place
that makes me feel
like I am shrinking
and yet
still,
invincible.
Georgina Ashworth is in the final year of her Writing degree at Edith Cowan University, Western Australia. Winner of the ECU’s Talus Prize in the poetry category (2017), she was also the judging panel’s favourite for the Yarra Libraries Receipt Poetry Competition, as part of the Digital Writers Festival (2019).