Photo: Adi Rozen-Zvi
It does not matter
Where you are:
Jungle, mountain
Old or new,
Plastic, wood
Or bamboo, too.
There is play here
To be had
If you wish to …
And you do.
For Terri’s Sunday Stills: Playground
Thailand Playground
Month: May 2019
Part Of History
Photo: C. M. Highsmith, Old Live Oak Cemetery, Selma, Alabama
“There is glory in the graves.”
“No there ain’t. There is only death in them graves. And bones, if they ain’t turned meal theyselves yet.”
“I’m only reading what it says, Gramma.”
“You is only saying what is lies, then, and it don’t make it no more true in the sayin.”
“I’m sorry, Gramma.”
“Hmm.”
Moss trailed from the old trees like cobwebs strung on homes for Halloween. There was eerie beauty in them. And sorrow.
“Why did you bring me here, Gramma?” she asked.
“Because it be part of history. Good and bad, you is supposed to know it.”
“It looks really old.” And peaceful, she didn’t add.
“I hear tell they’s started buryin’ here about 1830. Didn’t have no old live oaks then, or young’uns. Just dead peoples.”
“When did they plant the oaks, then?”
“Nearabout 1880. They trees is pretty, Chile, but they graves still got no glory.”
For What Pegman Saw: Selma, Alabama
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It’s Your Sign
Photo: Josh Rangel via Upsplash
“It’s your sign,” she said.
“I don’t care,” he muttered.
“Yep, in your sign, too.”
He scowled and she laughed and he knew that anything he’d do or refuse to, would become her proof of the zodiac dictating his life, actions, tastes, worldview.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Zodiac in 43 words
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Evidently
Photo: neonbrand on upsplash
Evidently,
There are those who think the will of men should rule over the will of women.
Evidently,
There are those who’d see a rapist as less deserving of punishment than the one who stopped the ongoing impact of that rape.
Evidently,
There are many who claim that their own interpretation of God should be forced onto all others, regardless.
Evidently,
There are those who do not see how that endangers the very premise of religious freedom, and with it, their own access to choice.
Evidently,
There are those who hark for days when girls and women were a property that men could do whatever they desired with, regardless of whether girls and women had agreed.
Evidently,
There are those who push their personal beliefs as science, while ignoring and denying facts that do not fit the narrative they’d allow as acceptable to perceive.
Evidently,
There are those who’d abandon, ignore, punish, and vilify already living children while pretending to cherish those who aren’t yet born.
Evidently,
There are those who value power over choice and silencing over voice.
Evidently,
There are those who’d put people to death even as they claim all life is precious.
Evidently,
There are still many who do not see and many who refuse to even try.
And so … evidently,
There’s much still needed to be done in this time of religious extremism in its push to diminish rights, undo progress, and force radicalization.
Much to do:
To keep theocracy from overtaking true religious and personal freedom;
To liberate distortions of what some claim is pro-life but is in fact just anti-choice;
To help the lost see that support of life respects and encompasses the living and does not, selectively, ‘defend’ only the unborn;
To dispel outdated views of women as unable or unworthy of autonomy over their own bodies, health, and futures;
To protect the lives of women and girls from the intrusion, disrespect, disregard, and dismissal of value, that criminalizing of choice does.
Because …
Evidently,
There is much still needong to be done.
To ensure choice is protected
So lives, too, can.
For Linda’s SoCS prompt: Adverb
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Toe in Tow
Photo: Arlette Loeser
There’s a little
Big toe
Twirling free
On the go,
As the other
In tow
Hopes its own
Sock
To throw.
For Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Hands, feet, or paws
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They Bowed
Photo prompt: Sue Vincent
“They bow, you see,” Mir explained.
The child held on silently to his hand.
Mir peered down at the small head, so uncharacteristically still, the red curls shining like molten gold under the sun.
The quiet lingered and Mir did not break it. More words would not change how there was only so much one could say about some things.
A bird fleeted close. A bee buzzed by. Somewhere a donkey brayed and a dog’s bark answered.
Still the child did not move.
Mir let the air in and out of his lungs mark the passage of time, even as he knew it would not be measured in the same way by the child. Nor would it matter. Time is rarely what it seems to be, anyhow.
The air shimmered. The scent of smoke wafted from someplace beyond the fields, and in it mixed the faintest hints of manure and baking bread.
A caterpillar inched its way atop a blade of grass.
“There is no wind,” the child finally noted.
“There is not,” Mir confirmed.
“Are they tied together?”
“They are holding limbs.”
The child looked at her own hand in her grandfather’s. She did not look up, but Mir could feel the connection being made as it wove a thread of understanding between the two of them, between them all.
A hush fell. Then a sudden breeze rippled through the field and whistled an unnamed sound as it passed through the stacks. The tips nodded.
The child bowed back.
For Sue Vincent’s Thursday Photo Prompt: Wicker
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Dive Right In!
Photo prompt © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields
The water glistened.
Gloria shook. “I don’t think I remember how.”
“Just do it,” Jody said. “It’s like riding a bike. Your body never forgets.”
I never had a bike, Gloria thought, and there is much I worked hard to have my body forget. Especially since that day.
“It’ll come back to you,” Jody urged. Ordered, almost. “Dive right in!”
It was the edge in the trainer’s voice that did it, and what it brought back was not welcome.
“No.” Gloria pulled her swim cap off. “Not here. Not yet. Not today.”
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
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The Long Night
Photo: Amitai Asif
The long night arrives
Wrapped in ends
Of dreams
And threads of hopes.
A tapestry
Of what may come
Therein,
As unfettered souls
Are finally free
To roam
Within.
Where darkness
Becomes its own
Light,
That holds
No more an actual
Night.
Note: The photo depicts an ancient burial cave in Israel
For the Tuesday Photo Challenge: Night
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Echoes
Photo: NRD at Unsplash
They’ve left the fridge door open.
The cool pooled close,
Breathing light
Into the space
As if the halo of it
Could be
Mistaken
For the life
That no longer
Offered heartbeat
In these rooms
That still echo
With the sounds
Of “please don’t!
Oh please!
Please!
Not the kids!”
(256 characters)
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Fuzz Guard
Photo: Atara Katz
Listen up
Little fluff
There’ll be no mischief
And stuff.
Best make sure
That you stay
In the shallows,
If you don’t
Wish to meet
Claws as gallows.
There will be no
Dissent
Till wings let you
Ascend.
So since you are yet
To create
Actual feathers,
You will heed
Pond-time rules
By your elders.
For Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Feathers
Na'ama Yehuda 
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