Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
Fill your eyes with the budding
Potential of life as it bounds
To the surface, bursting forth,
A force to be reckoned, with a sigh
Of tremulous
Hope.
Fill your heart with the tenderest
New things, which will bloom
In your soul
Deep within.
For the dVerse quadrille challenge: fill
Santo Tomas, Spain (Ricky Rew on Unsplash)
It was a golden end.
To the day. To their journey. To what they managed to do together, for the first time in a long time without bitter exchanges that gouged their hearts and left them both scarred.
The trip to Santo Tomas was an impromptu thing. The healing they’d invested in was not.
“We could go, you know,” he’d mentioned as she’d browsed to pass the time while waiting outside the therapist’s office. It was always an awkward time, sitting together in the ante room, aware that what came next was lancing boils and airing out things too noxious to attempt alone.
“Can we, though?” she’d replied, layering many meanings.
“I think so,” he’d said.
His hesitation, more than anything, was what had her agree.
The therapist’s hesitation, too. She wanted to prove the woman wrong.
She watched him jog by sun-glow. Her heart warmed. They were going home.
For What Pegman Saw: Santo Tomás
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
Take a pause
In the middle of a busy
Day,
To let calm
Wash down the toil, and sweetly stress
Allay.
For Terri’s Sunday Stills: Sweet
Photo: Amitai Asif
“There is no need to die,”
He stretched his long legs
And sighed,
“To experience bliss
In the here
In the now.
We need only
Allow.”
She leaned back
And exhaled
What should have long been
Expelled.
As the breeze kissed
Her cheeks,
She prepared to be
Healed,
In the Eden on Earth
Of Elysian fields.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Elysian in 56 words
“Can you believe this weather? The sun is …” she stopped cold, her jaw frozen in mid-sentence. Her heart thundered, threatening to escape the confines of her chest.
“Mauve?”
Eric’s voice sounded as if filtered through molasses. Someplace in her stunned mind she noted to herself that she finally understood why cartoonists slurred speech and movement into agonizing slow-motion during moments of high-drama. It was as if the world itself spun differently. Time simultaneously lingered and lost all definition.
Her finger labored against a suddenly-too-heavy gravity. She pointed at the gravestone.
“The swirls,” she managed, her tongue was a parched brick in a desert.
She forced herself to breathe and swallow. Paradoxically the motion released some moisture back into her arid mouth.
“It is the mark of my ancestors,” she whispered. “A sacred, secret, rarely-used Sentry Sign. I’d only seen it once. I didn’t even know they’d been to this land.”
For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge
Oy vey, Oy vey
Or, as they say.
Bless their hearts,
Now we best pray.
For this pack,
Who clear as day
Have evidently
Lost their way.
For Linda Hill’s SoCS prompt: (un)pack
She shivered in the early winter chill and pulled the woolen cloak around her. The wind whipped her hair – always unruly – into her eyes. Her fingers stung. The day was above freezing, but the cold damp still had a way of swimming through her clothing to steal away her body heat. Her face felt stiff and she rubbed her hand over her cheeks and chin to warm them.
She picked up her pace only to slow down again once she neared the stream. The slope was treacherous and she did not fancy the possibility of a dunking in the bone-chilling water. How different this was, she mused, from the summer days of her childhood, when along with friends she had raced down the slope with the absolute intention of being the first to splash in.
The stream had seemed bigger then. Wilder and yet in some ways tamer.
She did not know at the time the other stories it could hold. The risk it would foreshadow.
She was still an innocent then.
As if in answer to her mood, the wind picked up and buffeted the edges of her cloak around her legs, threatening to unclothe her. She pressed her lips together in determination and shook her head. Not here. Not now. Not ever.
Not again.
The stream was lower than expected for the time of year, but she knew the looks could be deceiving. It wasn’t just depths that could kill you. Or the flow.
She picked her way carefully to the bank. She stood a few yards downstream from the ancient laundering stones that jutted at the widening where the narrow brook burbled into a seemingly placid pool before splashing down in tiny waterfalls at the other end. The women still used the flat rocks when she was a young girl. They’d crouch on the stone to slap the fabric as the stream carried away the suds and dirt and the occasional bloody stain.
Moss now covered the stones and she knew it wasn’t just the change of season that had led to the greening. Women had laundered in all seasons. They’d break through thin ice to brave the numbing cold if they had to.
But no one had used the rocks for a long time now.
Perhaps not once since.
It had been a late summer day, the warm air filled with scents of aging flowers and over-ripe fruit and a whiff of sweat. There was the ‘thwack, thwack’ of scythes from the fields and the hum of bees and the calls of children and the wailing of a baby, cranky for the breast. The laundering stones were draped with wet fabric, the water foaming slightly with the soaps.
Then came the scream.
The rush.
The hush.
The wide-eyed horror.
Two small children, tangled in a vine, floated to bump against the rocks at the end of the pool, the current threatening to carry them over and downstream. Like broken puppets on a string.
They’d been playing and must have banged heads under water, or on a sharp rock, or on some other, less understood, thing. Their thrashing would have been noticed, but they must have been lost to the loud playfulness of others, or to the slap of clothing and the scrape of washers against stone. Or to how quickly they dropped.
She shuddered as the image superimposed itself on the empty coldness.
Everything changed after that. She only came here one other time since. And not with company.
The family of the man who had been a child at the time still wielded power in the town. She wouldn’t have been believed if she had told, that the dreamy boy who liked to twirl in the sun and who no one dared tease, had drawn a slingshot in mid-dance and used his spin to hurl small sharp stones into the children’s temples. The “thwack, thwack” was not only from scythes. She wouldn’t have been believed if she’d blamed him for the death of her pet rabbit, even though she’d seen him kill the trusting ball of fluff. Or for holding her down and poking her where no one should. She kept quiet and let the secret nibble holes in her insides.
It wouldn’t have brought the children back.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, bending to touch the water with her fingertips.
The bodies had long been buried, but their souls could not be. Not without the truth.
She rose and wrapped the cloak tightly around her. The clouds gathered and she saw a crack of lighting in the distance. A low rumble chased it, chastening or soothing, she could not tell.
She forced the air into her lungs and turned away.
She will be leaving again. The secret will remain.
He wanted to take the glasses off but it was not allowed.
The penalty was devastatingly permanent.
True Focus was reserved for a selected few. A privilege. Stealing it would result in losing all sight. Both eyes.
He blinked and tried to calm the nausea that came with the distorting lenses. He never got used to the dizziness. Or the headache.
He didn’t think they were meant to.
“Loyalty above clarity; Fealty, not facts.”
It was chanted. It was law.
A disoriented population was the goal.
He grieved for the realities that had been ignored when freedom still had hope.
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
Photo: R. RZ
Take a moment
To rest
Ere you once more
Take flight.
Let the weariest
Parts
Lean their weight
With foresight,
For the breath
That will come
Delicate
In the light.
For the Tuesday Photo Challenge: Rest
Photo: Daniela Holzer on Unsplash
She hadn’t intended for it to go this way.
She’d taken pains to be intensely selective of what she allowed. She’d researched every step, scoured barely legible ink on faded notes and prepared for every eventuality. She had kept her eyes peeled for any red-flags that should not be ignored.
She was careful.
And yet. There it was. Completely different than intended.
Her error.
She already repeated all the steps and realized her mistake. Her wonderful mistake.
It did not turn out as she’d expected.
It turned out fantastic instead.
She bottled it.
The aromatic error that will become the star perfume of the age.
For the RDP Monday challenge: Aromatic
A place to improve my writing skills, and that's all.
We're not thriving, we're creatively photosynthesizing under duress.
History of the Bloomingdale area on Manhattan's Upper West Side
A creative miscellany of mythic fantasies
a weekly flash fiction prompt inspired by google maps
A community for writers to learn, grow, and connect.
To participate in the Ragtag Daily Prompt, create a Pingback to your post, or copy and paste the link to your post into the comments. And while you’re there, why not check out some of the other posts too!
I can't sleep...
Alternative haven for the Daily Post's mourners!
never judge a girl by her weight
original fiction and rhyme
You have reached a quiet bamboo grove, where you will find an eclectic mix of nature, music, writing, and other creative arts. Tao-Talk is curated by a philosophical daoist who has thrown the net away.
A photographer's view of the world - words and images to inspire your travels and your dreams
Life in progress
Straight up with a twist– Because life is too short to be subtle!
WordPress & Blogging tips, flash fiction, photography and lots more!
Light Words
Na'ama Yehuda 
You must be logged in to post a comment.