Hold My Spot

September 25, 2019September 25, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Photography, Resources and links, Writing Tags: Civil duty, Current affairs, FlashFiction, Friday Fictioneers, neighbors, NonFiction, Photo prompt, Volunteer, Vote, Writing prompt 60 Comments

Photo prompt: Na’ama Yehuda

The rain swelled and lessened, as did the line of people, standing dutifully in the raw, spitting day.

“How long?” A woman asked, leaning heavily on her cane.

“They’ll let you in,” I said, pointing. “You don’t need to stand in the long line.”

“What if they won’t? I don’t want to lose my place,” she fretted.

“Don’t worry,” a young hooded man motioned in direction of the building. “I’ll hold your spot.”

I smiled at him.

“Come,” I linked my arm in hers, round sticker prominent on my jacket “I’ll show you. I’m so happy you’re here to vote!”

For Rochelle’s FridayFictioneers

Note: Thank you Rochelle for using my photo! 🙂 Yay hurray! (It was, indeed, taken during an election day, where people stood in the pouring rain for over an hour, as the line stretched along sidewalks and around the corner in my neighborhood. The above is a depiction of real events). If you are in the US and aren’t registered to vote yet, please do! And, when elections come – any election – Vote! Your voice matters. Don’t let anyone convince you it does not.

The Strength Of Stone

September 24, 2019November 12, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Meditations, Muse and Flow, Photography, Poetry, Reflections, Writing Tags: Balance, comfort, fpj-photo-challenge, Photo Challenge, Photography, Poetry, Resilience, Rest, Sensitivity, Stone, Strength 30 Comments

Photo: Ofir Asif

The strength of stone

Allows the rounding of its

Edges by time

And rain.

It lets the earth

Scour its base

As flood-paths swirl

And drain,

Even as it lets itself

Maintain

A firm place

To lean

One’s burden on,

Again.

Note: My nephew took this photo in Ethiopia, and I am humbled and moved by the beauty of it, and the eons it carries and the beginnings – and middles, and ends – of so many things it had seen.

For the Tuesday Photo Challenge: Stone

Not Doom

September 23, 2019November 12, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Muse and Flow, Photography, Poetry, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Challange, Determination, dVerse, Extinction, Grief, hope, Poetry, Quadrille, Tenacity, Writing prompt 35 Comments

Photo: Na’ama Yehuda

I am not yet

Extinct

From here.

The winds that came

Once more

To blow me into an

Oblivion of preemptive

Grief,

Are yet to fray

The threads that

Hold me

In the hope

That this time, too

Will turn

A test, not

Doom.

For the dVerse Quadrille Poetry Challenge: Extinction

Heads Up

September 22, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Change of Seasons, Fantasy, Flash Fiction, Just for fun, Lore, Micro-fiction, Personification, Photo prompt, SPF, Sunday Photo Fiction, Timeless 14 Comments

Photo from Morguefile

“I never got a chance to get ready!” Tuttie moaned, trying helplessly to wriggle so her mane fell as it ought.

“Shush! I’m trying to watch.” Tussock grumbled.

“Tuttie, your tuft looks fine!” Tilly quipped.

“No, it doesn’t. It’s all blowing in the wind.” Tuttie retorted. She was ever so particular about the way her threads flowed.

“Of course it would move,” Tussock bristled and tried to stand in attention as the clouds flew on the breeze. “When has it ever not been windy here?” Tuttie was annoying, but it irritated him even more that Tilly always perked up to soothe her fussy sibling’s fronds. She should get s spine instead of bowing to every mood. And why did he have to get planted right between these two, anyway?

“You in the periphery, stop swaying like a bunch of leaflets and stand up taller.” Topknot’s voice meant business. “Heads up now. It is almost time.”

The assemblage quieted. It was time for the sun to cross the horizon at the top of the tallest tree. A yearly passing when their ancestors’ fluff could climb aboard the golden orb’s mighty ship, and be carried to their eternal rest beyond the sea.

For the Sunday Photo Fiction prompt

A Map Of Reminiscing

September 21, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Canada, Erosion, Flash Fiction, Loss, memories, Micro-fiction, Newfoundland, travel, What Pegman Saw, Writing Challenge, Writing prompt 38 Comments

Green Gardens trail in Gros Morne National Park, NL (Timothy Holmes on Unsplash)

They’d come to Gros Morne every summer. On “Dad Week.” Camp in a tent that always leaked but Dad wouldn’t replace, every patch and glued seam a map of reminiscing. They’d spend days on the meadows, walk the volcanic beach, go down to Old Man’s Cove.

Sal loved all of it. Even the chill and wet and constant hunger (for there was always more Dad aspired to catch than what he’d actually manage to). Sal never complained. He’d give up everything to breathe the ocean and make up stories about pirates in the coves. He’d even downplay the painful rash and sneezing (they never did find which wild-flower he was allergic to, and he didn’t want to, afraid Mom would say he couldn’t go).

Erosion closed his favorite trail, but not his memories.

He gazed at the ocean and wondered if Dad, whose mind was fading, still had his.

For What Pegman Saw: Newfoundland & Labrador, Canada

Fair Exchange

September 21, 2019November 12, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Meditations, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Reflections, Writing Tags: Barter, hope, life, Micro Poetry, Poetry, Weekend Writing Prompt, Widsom, Writing Challenge, Writing prompt 24 Comments

Photo: Pixabay on Pexels.com

She knew

It had always been

A barter:

Heartbeat

For

Hope.

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Barter in 11 words

It’s a Wrap

September 20, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Flash Fiction, Micro-fiction, Moving on, Rap, Relationships, Reputation, SoCS, Stream of Consciousness, Wrap, Writing prompt 33 Comments

Photo: Monica Silvestre on Pexels.com

“It’s a wrap,” she said, and rose, and massaged the small of her back, which after all those hours of sitting felt as if sharp clamps had been tightened through it. Her back was never quite the same since the car accident. Or was it since the Shingles? Or the bad fall? Or the earlier things that were best left unremembered?

It wasn’t only her spine that bowed under the spasm. Her muscles were responding to a lot more than just the time spent in the chair.

He looked up, annoyed and uncomprehending. “Wrap, how?”

“In all the ways that matter,” she responded. It felt like ions since a soft hand on her back would melt the stress away and deepen her breath and make sleep nestle in so close she could smell it.

Decades? Years? Months? Too long.

“Living up to your rap of being cryptic, I see,” he muttered.

It was meant as a jab, but instead made a small peal of laughter form like a pearl inside her belly.

“I guess I am,” she noted, one hand still kneading the tightness in her lumbar area, the other held close against the urge to pat his head and make it better.

She’s moving on. He’ll have to find someone else to do all that for him now.

For Linda Hill’s SoCS prompt: Wrap/Rap

The Way Of Stars

September 19, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Memoriam, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Flash Fiction, Folklore, Gratitude, Grief, Micro-fiction, Murmuration, Photo prompt, saying goodbye, Sorrow, Starlings, WritePhoto 30 Comments

Photo: Sue Vincent

They were like stars, swirling low and high across the sky, marking the path of time and soul and light and dark and what will come and what had been.

As the murmuration rose and swelled, so did the sorrow in her chest, as did tears, and longing, and gratitude.

Her grandmother had told her once, that murmurs were a way of making stars. Flocking in elegant waves across the heavens, to the places far above, where movement wasn’t labored and where breath no longer hurt and where hearts beat in the unison of souls that know all separation is only an illusion.

She held on, remembering, her tears a stream to feed flowers that would grow to feed the small things that would feed the starlings that would murmur to make stars to house beloved souls. And she thought of how the murmur in her chest – which made sound and sobs – ached and expanded as the birds’ wings wove and rose and dipped and dove.

For it was like being seen.

The starlings’ dance a last hello, a soft goodbye, a blessing on the wind.

For Sue Vincent’s Write Photo: Murmur

The Skylight

September 18, 2019September 18, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Accident, Alone, Farm house, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Micro-fiction, Photo prompt, Skylight, Somber, Waiting 53 Comments

She always loved that skylight. The one thing she’d insisted on when they’d rebuilt the old farmstead. Every day since, the sun streamed in or the rain puttered on or clouds swam above, transforming the indoors into a moving tapestry.

They’d kept the bones of the building, but the roof had been rotten. It needed redoing.

Like her bones.

She lay on the flagstone floors, sauce dripping onto her from where she must have upset the pot as she’d slipped and fell and something in her broke.

The skylight her only companion. The light fading. The day still long.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers