Photo: Nattu Adnan via Unsplash
He still seeks to speak with fish
Before night claims their beloved beach
But she’d smiled enough goodbyes, to rise into her evening leap.
For Three Line Tales
Evening Leap
Month: January 2019
Vintage Ride
Photo: Atara Katz
As you rumble along
Under skies
Blue like song,
Do you travel
Afar
To the past
In this car?
What new memories
You’d share
Of what’s found
Over there?
Do days gone
Still speed on
Scene by scene
Gray and green
By the glean
Of your machine?
For the Sunday Stills Challenge: Vintage
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The Boy Who Was Very Brave
Photo: rawpixel.com on Pexels.com
“Be brave,” he said, and closed his eyes to ward off at least the pain of seeing his skin pierced by sharpness.
“Just a scratch,” the nurse stated in rote-like monotone, forgetting that for this boy nothing at this point was ‘just a scratch,’ especially not with veins well worn from prodding, let alone in a child who must struggle to understand why any of this was necessary.
“Be brave,” he said again, and his voice shook, and a tear slid under his lids and traveled down the small cheek to settle on his ear like a tiny sorrow-diamond.
“I’m sorry,” the nurse pressed her lips together when the third poke failed and another scarred blood vessel rolled under her needle. She’ll have to try another site. How on earth did someone not put a port in this child yet?
“Be brave,” the boy clenched his eyes to slits but more tears fled. “Be brave.”
The nurse looked up, distressed by his determined resignation. She paused and placed her gloved hand on his cheek. “You are,” she said. “Very.”
Eyes still shut, he shuddered and she wasn’t sure if he understood. She pulled a chair to his gurney and smoothed his hair. Someone from the Children’s Home had brought him to the hospital with another flareup, but the orphanage was too short-staffed to have anyone stay with him, especially when the boy wasn’t fussy and reportedly “used to” the hospital.
As if there could be such a thing as a child being “used to” being alone in a hospital.
“You are brave,” she repeated. Her eyes stung and perhaps the emotion in her voice more than her words filtered through his bracing because his eyes opened to meet hers.
“You don’t deserve any of this,” she said. “No one does. What you do deserve is to get better, and for people to really see and understand how brave you are. You are so so brave.”
Another tear rolled toward his ear. She hoped this one wasn’t from fear but from recognizing a connection.
“I’ll be as gentle as I can,” she promised. “I know this must be awful, but I need to get a line in for your medicine. Can you be brave for me just a bit longer?”
He held her eyes before he nodded.
“Good boy. So let’s just get this over with?”
He nodded again and this time did not close his eyes but hung them on her face. He did not look away or make a sound as she flicked and poked and needled.
“Good lad,” she praised, relieved, as she finally placed the clear bandage over the IV.
He took in a long breath.
“Can I get you anything?” she lingered, wanting to do something for this boy, so small and pale and alone.
He nodded.
“Some juice or crackers, maybe? It’ll do you good to get some of these in you,” she chattered. “I bet we have some toys I can borrow from the playroom for you.”
He held her gaze.
“Can I go home with you?” he asked. “I promise to be brave for you. I’ll be brave every day.”
(*Based on a true story.)
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A Good Fit
Photo: Bryan Schneider on Pexels.com
“How does it look?” she twirled,
And I knew she was asking about
A lot more
Than the dress.
“It looks really great,” I answered,
And she knew
It was about
A lot more than
Her silhouette,
Or how the fabric hugged
Her curves.
“Then I’ll take it,” she said.
And we smiled because
We both knew
It meant she will take him, as well.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Silhouette in 65 words
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Under Cloudy Skies
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
Mountains brood
Under skies
Packed with cotton
Piled high
Wrapped in shadows
Near by.
Afternoon
In Chiang Mai.
For the Wits-End Weekly Photo Challenge: Under Cloudy Skies
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Windowed
Photo: Inbar Asif
“They’re all old,” the guide gestured, “but some are worse off than others, for they are windowed.”
“Age does not make a building old,” he explained. “Even if sooner or later years form spider webs of fine cracks on every wall, those are just realities built by time. The product of life.”
“But these ones,” his hand rose in half-salute, half-point toward a row of especially dilapidated shutters, “they are windowed.”
When our faces must have told him we still hadn’t the story he’d wanted be told, he sighed and took pity on us. So privileged we had to be to not have lived what would have let us understand the depth of meaning in his words.
“Rooms empty of everything but ruined dreams. Windows widowed of hope. Houses like these go beyond broken relics. Some had gone so long bereft of young ones to gaze through their portals in a waking dream, that short of a miracle to breathe life back into them, they are windowed: dried to the bone of sound, stripped of souls, ready to fall.”
For V.J.’s Weekly Challenge: Windows
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Harp’s Heart
Photo: Amitai Asif
Off they go
With the harp
And the sounds
In their hearts.
Off they go
To work hard
And music’s soul
To impart.
For Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Music
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Memory Jar
Photo prompt: © Priya Bajpal
“Can I take one now?”
“Breakfast first.”
Deena sighed. She ate her oatmeal and drank her milk, but her eyes kept returning to the seashell table Dad had gotten for Mom. Before. To the jar that usually stood on the mantel. Since.
Finally, Grandma rose and put her mug in the sink.
Now that it was time, Deena hung back. She remembered filling the jar, with Grandma, after the accident, when memories were fresh and both their hearts were broken.
Grandma took her hand. “Come. Reach in. Pick one, and you’ll see – the right moment with them will find you.”
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
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Gentle Giant
Photo: Karen Forte
Hello Mom
I have come
To help with
The clothes.
Can you see
Just how gentle
I am being
With those?
I did not bite a hole
Heel or toe
In the socks.
Nothing like
What I’d done
To the new
Garden hose.
For this week’s Tuesday Photo Challenge: Gentle
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Peas in a Pod
Photo: Dvora Freedman
Like peas in a pod
They await
The day’s show.
Friends in flowers
And costumes
They’re alike
Yet I know,
Their hearts sing
Unique songs
I would like
To hear so!
For Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Pairs
Na'ama Yehuda 
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