[Poetry] Grandmother's Funeral

Read the winning entry for our week of September 22, 2024 prompt, 100 Words.

Grandmother's Funeral
by Charley Postlethwaite

The blue whale dies

	And the blue whale falls.

The second life begins on the abyssal seafloor, where

	hagfish hack at carcass meat and sleeper sharks amble

	through chasmed ribs. The ocean giant often dreamed of this

	descent to starless seas, felt the bone-burrow of snotworms,

	a young world growing in the excavated cavity

	of a cetacean heart. This heaven is a blessed feast, 

	the departed a deity of life who loves her sunken devourers

as if they are her own. Her skeleton becomes a home. 

I want to die like a blue whale.

I want to die like her.

About Charley Postlethwaite

Charley Postlethwaite first announced that she wanted to be an author at the age of four and has been eagerly chasing this dream ever since. She previously studied English Literature and Creative Writing at Cardiff University before completing a Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Bristol. She now lives and works in Gloucestershire, and is usually found writing her debut children's novel, working as a school teaching assistant, or failing to beat her grandfather at Scrabble.

This piece was written in response to the prompt 100 Words.