Photo: Amitai Asif
As her eyes finally
Closed
And her breath
Not returned,
She knew
What awaited her
Just
‘Round the bend:
A new journey
Ascends
Life beyond
Epoch’s end.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Epoch in 27 words
Note: Dedicated to all who face the final journey … and thus to all … for we all would. May we walk life’s path the way we can and should.
CCC #68
“This won’t do,” Marc shook his hard-hatted head and lifted the dreaded red marker to the clipboard.
Nicholas scratched under his own protective gear in effort to control his irritation. Marc’s been insufferable ever since he’d been promoted, parading with his supervisor’s paraphernalia as if it made him a demigod. For the millionth time, Nicholas wondered whether Bob The Builder — their blue coveralls donning boss — had assigned him to Marc’s team just to get back at him for the moniker. As if it was Nicholas’s fault that the man fit the cartoon character to a T.
“How come not?” he managed when the silence lingered.
“The arrow,” Marc pointed the board across the water.
“What about the arrow?!” Nicholas snarled. He almost fell, painting the darn thing while standing in a dingy.
“Pointing the wrong way,” Marc smirked in evident satisfaction. “Won’t do to go against the flow, you know.”
For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge #68
Photo: Arnaud Jaegers on Unsplash
It does not do to elect
Only those who self-select.
Because it is best to object
To any who hold no respect
For others’ ability to reflect
On the facts in each subject.
For if we fail now to protect
The need of everyone to connect
And the necessity to detect
Those who humanity eject,
We might injustice reinfect
And cement moral defect
As the greedy now expect
Blind loyalty by genuflect.
For Linda Hill’s SoCS writing prompt: “ect”
Photo: Sue Vincent
It was the best place to play hide and go seek.
At least, that’s what they wanted him to think.
It was also the best place to go missing.
Not that they’d tell him. …
He had no reason to suspect anything was amiss. Not when the whole troop of them had ran together all the way to the weathered monoliths that dotted the small glens by the ancient cliffs. Not when the game had ensued with much merry running and grabbing and stone-circling. Not even when most of the children had headed back home for supper as dusk neared, but he was invited to stay “and play a bit longer” with a handful of the most popular kids.
He was new in town. He felt included. He felt welcomed.
He should have felt scared.
“He just disappeared,” they later said. “We thought he’d gone home with the others.”
“It has happened before,” their parents nodded, wrapping arms around the shoulders of their feet-shuffling children and forming a united wall against the ashen faces of the boy’s parents, the newcomers who never should have come, who never could belong. “The boy must have wandered away in faded light and fallen into a sinkhole.”
The lights seemed brighter than usual that night. The music louder than remembered. The movements blurred. The words slurred. The heels on the wood rung jackhammers in his head.
He clenched his teeth and dug his nails into the worn velvet of his seat to keep from squirming.
She’d worked so hard for this.
The years of training. The months of practice. The weeks of rehearsals. The days of excited anxiety as the premiere neared. The long awaited curtain calls.
He was not going to let his daughter’s performance be upstaged by a migraine. Or a stroke. Or an aneurysm.
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
Photo: Smadar Halperin-Epshtein
They looked outside the window into
Yards and yards of yard,
And knew this house will be one where
All play will thrive unmarred.
The world that spread
For miles ahead
A guard for
Childhood’s boulevard.
For the Tuesday Photo Challenge: Yard
Photo: Morgan Petroski on Unsplash
She peeled away the stale layers
Of sorrow,
The sheets that wrapped around the core
Of what had once held
Grins.
And underneath the soot of tears
And grit
And grief
She found the gold that had been
Hidden
Soft against reality’s biting teeth.
For the dVerse quadrille challenge: Peel
Nikiski, USA (Photo: Elijah Hiett on Unsplash)
“The spirits of water and sun fought with the spirits of snow and ice well before the white man came to this land aiming to tame them.” The old man spoke softly, punctuating his words with silence. “Our people did not fight the spirits. Birth and death. Light and dark. The Tinneh accept them as they do life.”
The elder’s story was met with quiet nods of respect. There was no need for sound when another was speaking. A log crackled in the fire and the hush of waves sang on the shore instead.
“Our Tinneh ancestors have lived here ever since Walrus and Whale were born from the womb of Water Spirit. The white man calls this place Nikiski. It is a fine name, but not as fine as the name it already has. Just like the seal that swims unseen, Kultuk still lives under the new name’s ice.”
For What Pegman Saw: Nikiski, Alaska
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
Still
The promise of day sweeps
Broad calm in its sway,
And the sun,
Rising gold
Lights new stories
Untold.
For the Sunday Stills Photo Challenge: Early
Photo: Free-to-use-sounds, on Unsplash
From the hollows of despair, they fled.
The shirts on their backs and the children
In their arms, all they could manage to
Take.
Even the abysmal shelters they had recently
Been made to call
Home,
No longer gave any protection or
A chance at repair or
Reform.
They left, dodging death and finding
Further fright to
Flee,
And in their hearts they held on
Tightly
To the slowly fraying
Memory,
Of days when life was softer
And beds were warm,
And babies slept
Well kept
Safe from war and hate and
Harm.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Abysmal in 93 words
Note: Dedicated to all displaced, terrorized, pressed, oppressed, persecuted persons everywhere, and to the many millions who had, throughout history and in recent memory and in today’s times, been forced to further risk their lives by leaving what had once been home and safety behind, for the unknown.
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