No Prayer Crossing

July 27, 2019July 27, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Bhutan, Bridge, Crossing, Fear, Flash Fiction, Height, Karma, Micro-fiction, travel, What Pegman Saw, Writing Challenge 37 Comments

Photo: Faris Mohammed via Unsplash; Punakha, Bhutan

I glanced across the chasm. For someone born and raised in the Alps amidst sharp elevations, I was woefully unequipped. Sometimes I wondered what Karma I’d accumulated to explain it.

“You are protected, Dania.”

I looked up desperately at my mother, who wore an encouraging smile and already had one foot on the swaying bridge and a hand held out to assist me. Even as a baby I’d been known to tremble at the sight of any height, yet Mother’s optimism never wavered that one day her offspring would overcome what to her was an incomprehensible fear. She adored climbing.

Why she took me to Bhutan.

“This bridge is blessed,” my mother tried. “You’ll come to no harm.”

“I cannot,” I whispered, my legs shaking. Each prayer flag a flutter to match mine, the river vertiginous miles below. “No prayer will suffice. My very soul knows it’ll die.”

For What Pegman Saw: Bhutan

Cleaning Up

July 27, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Change, Clean up, Creative writing, Fire, Flash Fiction, Micro-fiction, New Beginnings, Restart, SoCS, Writing Challenge, Writing prompt 24 Comments

lighted matchstick on brown wooden surface

Photo Sebastian Sørensen on Pexels.com

No amount of soap and water could clean up this mess.

Even if I were to try, I wasn’t quite sure how I’d go about it, or if the effort was worth the results. Perhaps it’d be better to burn the whole thing to the ground and start from scratch.

I eyed the matches on the stove and looked at what I could no longer justify keeping around.

I wouldn’t miss most of it. Or so I had to hope.

My fingers struck a match and I held the small flame to the ring, amazed as always by how easily it grabbed hold and circled to make a blue-yellow-purple circuit of heat.

The fire leapt and danced and hissed.

I sighed.

It was time to wave good-bye. I needed a fresh beginning.

I set the kettle on to boil, sat back down, and hit “Delete.”

For Linda’s SoCS writing prompt: Clean/Dirty

Flight Patrol

July 25, 2019November 12, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Photography, Poetry, Reflections, Writing Tags: Black and White, CB&W, Community, imagination, memories, Photo Challenge, Poetry, Stork, Story, Wondering 14 Comments

Photo: Na’ama Yehuda

I watched its solitary fly by

And wondered if it felt

Lonesome for the many it had once

Belonged to

Yet left,

Or if it was a scout,

Holding a memory of a long-ago-known

Place to land

That others had forgotten

Or had misplaced the

Sense of.

Will it circle back to its own,

Flapping on the wing

In fatigued relief,

To let the rest know

It had found this night’s

Home?

For Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Anything that flies

Day Trip

July 24, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Change, Day trip, Family, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Micro-fiction, parenting, Plans, Train Station 33 Comments

Photo prompt: Sandra Cook

The day dawned gray and there was threat of rain, but she wasn’t going to be deterred by a bit of dirty weather.

She dressed him in his powder blue slicker and packed a bag with this and that. She weighed the idea of leaving the cumbersome stroller, but at three, though the boy liked walking, he lacked endurance for it.

“We going to see Papa?” he asked as the train rolled into the station.

She hesitated. She was loath to lie to him.

“Not the one you know,” she answered finally. “Though he may become it. We shall see.”

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Reading Time

July 23, 2019November 12, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Meditations, Muse and Flow, Photography, Poetry, Reflections, Speech Language Pathology, Writing Tags: blessing, children, Creative writing, fpj-photo-challenge, library, Photo Challenge, Poetry, Reading, Sculpture, Statues 5 Comments

Photo: Philip Coons

May the words wrap

Around you

In shade and in

Sun.

May a book grab

Inside you

To where stories

Abound.

May good tales sustain

Your

Every heartbeat

And sound.

May you find space

Aplenty

To create

Reading time.

For the Tuesday Photo Challenge: Sculpture

The Moon

July 22, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Creative writing, Dreaming, dVerse, Flash Fiction, Micro-fiction, Moon, Nightmares, Poetry prompt, Trauma, Writing Challenge, Writing prompt 22 Comments

Photo by George Desipris on Pexels.com

“What’s wrong?” I burst into her room with uncombed hair dripping from the bath and my bathrobe hanging half-opened.

She was sitting in her bed, sheets all tangled, the pillow clutched against her chest.

When she said not a word, I felt the terror rise inside me, too.

She’d had good cause for nightmares in the past, but it’s been years since any of those had woken her in such a state. Why now?

“What is it?” I crossed the distance from the door in three steps but dared not touch her lest my hands make her remember other ones, a lot less loving. “Can you tell me?”

She shuddered as if coming back from a great distance.

“I dreamt I was the moon,” she whispered. “Vast and cold and deathly airless.

“and,” her breath caught, “I dreamt that he found his way there.”

For the dVerse prosery challenge

Ladies In Waiting

July 21, 2019July 21, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Change, Creative writing, Flash Fiction, Micro-fiction, Relationships, Sisterhood, Sunday Photo Fiction, Waiting, Writing Challenge, Writing prompt 20 Comments

Photo by Arun Sharma on Unsplash

“It is time yet?”

Prissy frowned. Alia always never had an ounce of patience. “Look around. Does it look like it is time?”

Edna glared at Prissy. That girl would not recognize patience if it sat right in front of her and introduced itself by name.

“Anyone want a snack?” Deena reached into her bag and pulled out an assortment of wrinkled potato chip bags, a crumbling granola bar in a zipped bag, and apple slices that had seen brighter days.

Alia’s look of horror was so comical that even Prissy smiled.

Count on Deena to diffuse the tension, Edna thought.

They all had their roles in every little drama life presented. Whether like players on a stage or play-pieces on a chess board, she wasn’t sure. Only that they slid into their respective places with predictability that was both comfortable and disconcerting.

Perhaps not so surprising they would do so now, when it might be the last opportunity for it. Their dynamics were about to change forever.

As soon as it was time.

A door opened at the end of the hall and they all jumped.

“Alia Marquette?” a uniformed woman appeared. “Your shuttle to Mars is about to depart.”

For the Sunday Photo Fiction prompt

Be The Judge

July 20, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Creative writing, Dreams, Flash Fiction, hope, Judge, Micro-fiction, Relationships, Taking chances, Weekend Writing Prompt 9 Comments

Photo: Dvora Freedman

“You’ll be the judge of it,” he said.

He held the door for her and she hesitated a moment before slipping into the passenger seat. She buckled in part out of habit and part as security against the anticipated whiplash of yet another disappointment.

He drove in silence and she was grateful for it. They were beyond words by now, anyhow.

Roadside scenery shimmered by through a sudden squall.

“We’re here,” he said.

She must’ve fallen asleep.

“Say yes, and I’ll sign the papers,” he breathed.

She blinked. How did he find her dream house?

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Judge in 95 words

A Bit Of Clarity

July 18, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Meditations, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Beach, Creative writing, Ebb and flow, Flash Fiction, Insight, Life Lessons, Micro-fiction, Reflections, WritePhoto, Writing prompt 33 Comments

Photo: Sue Vincent

She always went to the beach for a bit of clarity.

The movement of the water on the sand brought her back into her own breath. The rush of energy reminded her of the push of arteries, the pull of veins. The predictably irregular rhythm of the surf reminded her how ebb and flow do not mean that things will be uniform. They’ll come and go. Each unique. Each set its own and inseparable from what flowed forth before and what is following.

She could count on a wave and then another and another, on the rise and fall, the crash and wash, the small detritus that each leaves and yet is part of what had been and what will be and what just is.

Like life.

Like the muddy, murky, uncertainties of everything.

Where the one thing she could trust was that another wave will come, and that even the biggest wave retreats, at some point, in wavelets of resignation. As another one rolls in.

For Sue Vincent’s WritePhoto challenge

Do Not Engage

July 17, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Funnies, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Creative writing, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Just for fun, Micro-fiction, New York City, Rockefeller Center, Statues, Unexpected 30 Comments

“It’s covering its eyes.”

“Say what?” Sergeant Frank was always gruff but Leon knew a warning when he heard it. He could (almost) visualize his superior in his boxer-shorts, remote in one hand and beer in the other. One did not get between the Sergeant and his beer.

“The new statue, Sir. In Rockefeller. It’s covering its eyes.”

“Leon, are you drunk?!”

“No, Sir. The hotdog man saw it, too. And a bystander.”

“Statues don’t move, Leon. That’s why they’re called statues.”

“This one did, Sir.”

Silence.

“Sir?”

Sigh. “I’m sending Marco. Meanwhile, Leon … sit tight and … do not engage …”

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers