For The Sake Of

February 3, 2024Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Adversity, Cruelty, Current events, Holding on, hope, pain, suffering, Trauma, Weekend Writing Prompt 15 Comments

(Photo: Sixteen Miles Out on Unsplash)

There might not be an end to this, she thought.

It broke her heart to even think it. For she did not recognize herself in this thought. This worry.

Hardship was a familiar thing. She understood struggle. The effort of building muscle against force.

She knew suffering.

But not this. Not the deliberate harm.

Not the anfractuous path of sorrow inflicted purely for the sake of pain.

She knew not what to do with that.

Other than build a barrier around her soul to protect what was left, grieve for the need to do so.

And hope.

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt of: anfractuous in 97 words

For Old Times

January 31, 2024Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Childhood Adversity, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Home, Making meaning, Micro Fiction, Overcoming, Repair 32 Comments

She’d see it on her way to school. A shell of itself.

A bit like her it was, she felt. Unprotected. Exposed to the elements.

Years later she returned to do her duty by those who birthed her. She took a walk, eager to escape the cloying empathy of people who knew exactly why she’d left. She saw it. Still a shell. But now a possibility.

“I’ll build you up,” she said. And did.

The thick walls welcomed her, insulating. The roof salvaged old beams into current protection.

A home at last. For old times sake. For new beginnings.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Photo prompt © Susan Rouchard

Gamma’s Note

January 20, 2024Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Drive, Family, Flash Fiction, Micro Fiction, Note, Summoned, travel, Weekend Writing Prompt 11 Comments

jonatan-balderas-cabanas-6QPDL5KhQ3c-unsplash

(Photo: Jonatan Balderas Cabañas on Unsplash)

They didn’t know what they’d find when they got there.

The note only said to, quote: “get your backsides to my place without a dally.”

One didn’t dally when it came to Gamma. Didn’t stop their speculating, though. The whole seven-hour drive.

They didn’t try to call. Gamma abhorred phones.

“The Devil’s in them things,” she said.

One didn’t argue. Now no one would.

She was in her chair. Waiting. Already cold.

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt of Note in 72 words

Unmovable

January 18, 2024Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Fair, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, hardship, hope, Micro Fiction, Siblings, Things Kids Say, Things Moms Say 33 Comments

“She’ll never,” Howey said.

“Still, she might,” Ron argued.

Howey shook his head. No use arguing. Ron couldn’t see what he chose to ignore.

Much like Mom, Ron was, if less pessimistic. Though Howey did worry that Ron, too, would ossify with hardship and time.

“If we did all the chores, perhaps?” Ron offered.

“She’d see that as us doing our duty,” Howey noted.

Ron’s face fell. He so yearned to see the fair!

“Maybe if we patch that roof she’ll thaw a little,” Howey added, seeing his brother’s disappointment.

“Thaw who?” Mom thundered. “Wash up. We go to town!”

For Friday Fictioneers

Photo prompt: © Jennifer Pendergast

Memory Lane

December 4, 2023Na'ama Yehuda Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Adversity, Childhood trauma, dVerse, Flash Fiction, Memory Lane, Micro Fiction, Overcoming, Prosery, winter 16 Comments

(Photo: Juho S on Unsplash)

She had promised herself to never revisit those times. The best forgotten ones. And yet there she was, a small child in her lap, embers glowing in the hearth, the dog worrying a burnt crust, and her mind meandering down memory lane.

“I was where I am when the snow began,” she started.

The child shifted a knobby knee into a rib, and a cold replaced the sweet weight in her lap. Stolen coals, they were then. Collected under pain worse than whipping if she was discovered yet at the risk of frostbite and no dinner if she did not. She’d secreted an apron-full before the snow began, coating the path, incriminating every footprint.

For the payment, she bore scars.

“I was where I am,” she pushed an unneeded log into the fire. Just because. “Yet now the snow scares me none.”

For dVerse Prosery challenge

Prosery prompt: “I was where I am
When the snow began”

From “The Dead of Winter” by Samuel Menashe. Full poem here.

The Enlightened

November 8, 2023Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Assumptions, Current events, End hate, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Historical fiction, History, Never Again, Students 26 Comments

We were not supposed to be afraid of them. After all, they were the articulate. Inquisitive. Supposedly enlightened.

It was the latter which scared us. The assumption. The expectation that if they have found their way here, they are automatically allies, and not foe.

And yet, they marched with those who sought to do us harm. They justified what should not be. They claimed superiority through intellectual high-ground dressed as morality.

A repetition. It was. Of the past.

And so we learned to hide. Our names. Our true identity. Our truth.

Lest we be hunted.

In the name of peace.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Photo credit: © David Stewart

Fence

October 13, 2023Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Current events, Distrust, Division, Etiology, Friday Fictioneers, Hate, NonFiction, Now what, Poetry, Separation 20 Comments

They built their house on the other side of the fence.

The far end of the bay.

To stay away.

Others aren’t like us, they’d say.

We’re better.

People don’t understand that

They’re nothing like us.

They built their house on the other side

Of the fence.

Taught their kids to hate

The Others

For not being

Like them.

For being

Less worthy.

Less than.

They build their house on the other side of

The fence.

The town gawked

First

Then shrugged

Then came to believe

That indeed

They were different,

Even dangerous

On the other side of

The fence.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Photo prompt © Rowena Curtin

Not a Zero-Sum

October 10, 2023Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Meditations, Memoriam, Poetry, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Current events, End cruelty, End hate, Enough, humanity, pain, Put children first, Terror, Terrorism, Trauma, War 16 Comments

(Photo: Jose A.Thompson on Unsplash)

Heartbreak is not a zero-sum game.

Pain is an and/and.

Destroying another is not a condition

Or proof

Or sign.

Being right or being wronged is not exclusive.

To anyone.

I will condemn

What should never

Be done.

I will not hate a People.

I will not celebrate harm.

I will not justify terrorism,

No matter the desired outcome,

Nor the hurting of children

In ‘payment’ for what someone has done.

I cannot see a space where rape or massacre,

Are ever, ever, a moral ground.

Heartbreak is not a zero-sum game.

Inflicted pain is not a battle won.

‘Collateral’ is not a term,

For anyone.

Babies aren’t worth less,

In another’s arms.

Granny Gray

October 6, 2023Na'ama Yehuda Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Ancestors, Dreams, Flash Fiction, Flashback, Friday Fictioneers, History, Knitting, Micro Fiction, Witch Hunts 25 Comments

It was the hood that did it.

Toppled time.

She stood and stared. The store around her ebbed into a surf of sounds that no longer carried any meaning. The colors drained. Rainbow into monochrome.

Like the hood.

Devoid of dye. Just like Granny Gray’s.

Someone bumped against her arm, then tugged. A voice called. There must have been words. But they were drowned.

Like Granny Gray. When they had come for her.

Way back when. And in Greta’s dreams ever since she had taken on knitting.

“Like Granny Gray,” they said. “The child has the fingers. And the eyes.”

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers