Photo: Izabelle Acheson on Unsplash
She will not elucidate.
She won’t expound.
She won’t make plain.
There is, in her view, absolutely
Nothing she needs to
Explain.
There is the plate.
There are the cookies.
There was her mouth to entertain.
So, what does any of that
Have to do with dinner
Or with waiting for dessert
Again?
They left the corner light on at night.
A habit.
A ritual.
An understanding.
The stone path had been there before they bought the property, and the remains of a lantern post. It was right where they’d wanted a vegetable garden, and so at first the plan was to plow the area clear and remove the slabs and pebbles.
But then the hoe broke.
And then the belt on the mower.
And then there was the matter of their daughter’s bellowing every time they tried to work on that part of the yard.
She was barely two at the time. Not quite talking. And yet she managed to throw “No! No!” tantrums and pull at their clothing and plop herself in utter-toddler-dejection right onto where they aimed to work.
“You best give up,” their neighbor nodded her warty chin, sage eyes not unkind in understanding.
It was the Fair Ones, she explained. They had their own paths. Their own energy highways.
“The ancients had marked it. To hold space and to deter the mischief. It is easier. And the young ones can still see.”
They left the light on.
Repaired the path.
Moved the vegetable garden.
Life was better calm.
Photo: Markus Spiske on Unsplash
You are not welcome.
Here.
Or anyplace that we hold
Dear.
You are unwelcome
Here.
Because you lack
The right color
Or veneer
Or gender
Or conviction,
And because you have far too much
Proclivity toward
Fear.
You are not welcome.
Here.
Though if you come,
Subservient,
Kowtowing
To us
Year by lingering
Year,
We might allow you
To remain
As long as you
Humbly
Adhere,
To our need to aggrandize
Our wrongs,
And as long as you
Declare you will
Never rise
Above a state that
Holds us as
Premier.
Note: Dedicated to all who fight ingrained injustice, racism, hate, brutality, and the historical realities of too many who bolster themselves by believing they are somehow ‘premier.’ For the record, there is nothing ‘supreme’ about anyone who claims ‘supremacy.’ There never was.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Unwelcome in 91 words
“If tied,” she said, “come by.”
“If not…?” he asked.
Her shake of head stilled any of the questions he had swirling inside his. It cooled his urge to argue. He knew it wouldn’t help. He knew it would only make what was already unlikely, impossible.
In the days that followed he found every reason to visit the gatepost. He wasn’t meant to come too close, but the nearby field offered cloves that his mare suddenly required, and there were numerous trips to town that merited taking exactly the dirt road that hugged parts of the property.
He drooped with every thread-less passing.
He couldn’t sleep.
He felt angry, worried, sick.
Till one day, as he rode by on an errand for a parcel, he saw it. A pink thread. Tied.
Her parents relenting.
They’d let him court her. Even though his father, in his drunkenness, had killed their son.
For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge
Photo: Sue Vincent
She walks along the dunes. There had been very little time away from others. So very few opportunities to be alone. She needs this more than air.
Morris agreed to keep an eye on the children. They were not enthused.
“He’s boring, Mama!” Ethan complained.
“Yeah, and his breath smells!” Lilly pouted.
“You don’t have to kiss him,” she replied. “And if you are bored, I can leave you some chores.”
They skulked away, displeased, but there was nothing for it, grumpy neighbor-as-babysitter or not. She knew she was becoming increasingly impatient. She did not want to cross the line into unkind.
It wasn’t their fault that Paul left. It wasn’t their doing that their dad did not see fit to shoulder any responsibility. She knew they missed him. He didn’t even think of calling on their birthdays. She knew Ethan cried for his dad in his sleep.
She almost took them with her to the dunes. Almost made it a family outing. Lilly loved running in the sand. Ethan’s eyes always lit up at the space. Like her, he loved the breeze and silence.
But she could not. Not this time.
This time she needed to replenish. For herself. For them. They needed a sane mother. She was running low on how.
She walks and breathes and ruminates and lets the worries and the sorrows stream out and flow down her cheeks and neck and chest till they evaporate.
There was a time she had hoped to have a house on the dunes. There was a time she had a dream of living in the solitary calm of gulls and tides and estuaries.
It wasn’t that she regretted having the children (marriage was a whole other story, given what non-partner Paul turned to be). She did not. Not once. She couldn’t imagine her life without them. Just for this morning, though … she needed to let be a part of herself that did not have them in its center.
She walks as if in daydream. The light shimmers and the estuary glints silver in the shrinking distance. It gives her peace. A reminder of how every stagnant-looking pool may in fact be only a pause in flow.
For Sue Vincent’s WritePhoto challenge
Photo prompt: Todd Foltz
“Are you sure it will work?”
Tim’s chin bobbed up and down enthusiastically.
A bit too enthusiastically. It looked suspiciously like an I’m-clueless-but-want-to-pretend-I’m-not kind of nod.
Benny frowned. He had a bad feeling about the whole plan. “I still think we should have brought a proper pan.”
“Nah,” Tim waved his hand and pointed to the ball of molten orange glaring at them from the horizon. The light shimmered. “They said it was going to be hot enough to fry eggs.”
“In the carton? Don’t you need to crack them first?”
Tim shrugged. “We can always make hard boiled ones.”
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
Photo: Keith Luke on Unsplash
Eons had passed
Since when they had
Their skins
Stolen
By man.
They learned to love
The life they had
Yet dreams
Cried hope
Aground.
Till secrets told
By men at night
Got heard
And sang
Around.
And off they went
The selkie all
Safe in
Their skin,
Unbound.
For the dVerse poetry challenge: Selkie
Photo: Noah Austin on Unsplash
Gallivanting Gary liked to roam about
In town.
He refused to let a passing hardship weigh
Him down.
He took his time to get things done.
He rambled on and on.
But once the dinner bell at home was rang
He’d lift his feet
And run.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Gallivant in 46 words
She could not sleep for the excitement.
A dream come true. A lifelong prayer answered.
She lost count of the times they’d gone without, made do with little. They saved. They scrounged. They worked. They sought. They searched. They found.
Only to be turned down. Back onto the merry-go-round.
It was not for sale. It was too old. It was rotten. It was tied up in legal battles. It was too large. Too steeply priced. Too small.
She almost lost hope.
Then this. Beat up and needing some work. Their Goldilocks perfection.
He didn’t want to sell. His late wife’s boat. Her family’s name. Nope.
They begged. They pleaded. They tried to explain.
Finally … he relented. Perhaps they wore him down.
They drew the contract. Argued. Fretted. Signed.
The boat was theirs.
“You must rename her,” he stressed, pen in hand.
Of course.
Tomorrow it will become her River Run.
For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge
He spent the day lying in the field. Waiting.
Eventually someone would miss him, or wonder about how come he is so late.
Eventually they will think of sending someone to check.
For the moment, all he could do was gaze up at the skies, his leg in an angle that no leg should be in, and his breath curtailed to the smallest gasps as to limit the stabbing pain that traveled through him – like a snake’s bite and a red-hot poker combined – if his lungs filled up enough to move the lower part of his torso. He’d never been more acutely aware of how all joints connect.
A marvel, really.
And a pain.
He almost laughed at his own joke only to remember the infinite well of torture that he’s been finding over the hours he’d been this way. There was no bottom. Only crests of agony he could know and not know of, ride and fall off of, let be and let go.
In the first hour after it happened he’d been angry at himself for the stupidity of attempting to leverage boulders that should not be attempted solo. The stick, not sturdy as he’d hoped, snapped in half, sending him to the ground in an way he could not reconstruct for the blinding nausea of torment that had ensued. He didn’t know what part of his leg it was that broke, or not exactly. Raising his head even just a little led to the world spinning and a blackness closing in, and not only from the clouds that seemed to gather.
He wasn’t angry anymore. There was nothing left in him to spare on blame.
The grayness above grew heavy. It would not be long before the rain.
He’d be miserable in the muddy wet.
It would also bring people faster. They would not expect him to misread the weather. They’ll question. They’ll come.
A drop tickled his nose and he suppressed a sneeze, almost crying with desperation to avoid more pain.
A call sounded, and for a fraction of a second his heart soared. But in the next, awareness filled in: it was not a human’s.
He opened his eyes to a quartet of geese flying overhead. Wings flapping asynchronously against a rising wind.
“Fly safe,” he mouthed, eyes overflowing with misery in spite of himself. They could move. He was jealous. He was helplessly alone.
More drops fell. Tears or rain, it did not matter.
He held on to the imprint of the silhouettes against the spitting heavens.
Soon, his family will realize he hadn’t come home. Soon they’ll wonder about it enough to worry where he was. They’ll send someone.
For the moment, all he could do was breathe, and hold in all the sobs, and let the pain wash over him like rainfall.
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