Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
To be home
Where the sun kisses
Blooms
On the sly,
And the buildings cannot
Hide reflections
Of sky,
Where new life bursts on forth
Undeterred
Joy unmasked,
And this moment
Outdoors
Is almost all one
Can ask.
For the Lens-Artists Challenge: at home
Photo: E.K.
“I don’t know what we’ll do,” she sobbed.
He lifted her chin gently till the brown-speckled eyes met his. “We’ll manage,” he said, surety threaded carefully into his voice. He didn’t want her feeling as if she was weak for unraveling or wondering whether any of what she was feeling was excessive or unreasonable. It was not.
He didn’t have all the answers, either.
Only love.
He had plenty of that.
And it had to be enough.
“Everything’s a mess,” she sighed.
It was. And yet, it wasn’t. Not everything. Their care for each other had not a single tangle in it.
“It’s like this cotton field,” he breathed. “Raw fibers that are nonetheless brimming with nascent fabric potential. We’ll pick through our grief and weave love into a new life.”
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Fabric in 131 words
“Oh, but this will do! This will absolutely and completely do!”
Mattie grinned at her friend’s delight. If there was one thing you could count on when it came to Tina, it was exuberance. Roiling and contagious rivers of it. “I’m so glad,” she chuckled. “The Bluebells ensured this had your name on it.”
Tina walked around, unable to stand still and barely able to contain herself. Her voice jingled in the crisp spring air. “We’ll just need a ladder, of course. Marco could make one for me. And a bit of rain awning. I’ll ask Sheri to sew one. I’m sure she has some spare water-proof material that her magical fingers can persuade to cooperate.”
The tiny figure twirled, skirts flying in the sunlight. “Oh, Mattie, you are the best best best friend anyone could ask for. I can’t wait to move in! This is the perfect fairy house!”
For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge
“And the man in the straw danced and danced …”
“Till the morning came and changed his chance?”
Thomas stroked his granddaughter’s head. She never tired of the story. Her favorite, and she knew it by heart. As he knew her many expressions, the myriad of small sounds she made as she dreamed each night.
She was his favorite. His only, but still his favorite. No one could convince him otherwise.
“Grandpa?” the child burrowed deeper into her blankets.
“Yes, Pumpkin?”
“Do you think the man in the straw ever wanted to be something else?”
He felt his eyes widen as he glanced down at her. Her eyes were open, too. Gone were any traces of the soft daze of moments before sleep.
“What do you think, Pumpkin?” he returned the question, uncertain whether what he’d read into it was indeed in the child’s mind, and unwilling to insert his own assumptions into what may well be a different query altogether.
There were many things to wish were different. In the folktale. In life, too. He often wondered if she so loved the old story exactly because it spoke of vulnerabilities and challenge, of facing fears and finding fault and making do and fighting on. All things she’d know more than enough of.
The child nibbled momentarily on her lower lip. “I think maybe he sometimes wanted to be the man in the spiral. Or Fire. Or the mask. Or the stag.”
“Hmm …” he nodded, hoping she’d say more, wondering if she would. There was a depth to the child. Currents he did not always understand or believe he ought to. An Old Soul, his beloved Mara had said of the newborn even in the few days she had with the child before the angels called.
“But,” the little girl sighed, curling up so her back rested against her grandfather’s thigh as he sat on the edge of her cot. “I think he knew he was the Man In The Straw …”
The pause lingered. The child yawned.
“… and that he was meant to dance and dance …” she whispered, her breath deepening, her eyes closed. “… till morning came and changed his chance…”
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
On this Earth Day
As we are all
One,
Cooped in
Holding on,
Blue around the fingertips
Blue around the lips,
Blue in oceans, and
In the reflections of the deep,
Blue in sorrow
Blue as sky lift
Dark sapphire
To the reified aqua
Of hope.
May we rise
Like the sun,
And not forget how
We can
Help each other
Cope.
For Terri’s SundayStills: Earth
“It’s been a while since they lived here.”
I nodded. The place was filthy. A bit stinky, too.
“Nothing a little elbow grease won’t fix.”
I wished she would shut up. The property manager’s eagerness to sell the place was obvious. Her neglect of the place was, too. She might’ve spent a bit of elbow grease before showing the space.
No matter. The sorry state of the cottage might lower her price to my range.
“Why aren’t these garbage bins outside?” I ventured.
“Oh,” she fidgeted, “those are … um … kind of urns. They’d wanted to be buried in them, indoors.”
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
This is the photo of Sarah Kol (1933-1944), my grandfather’s niece. She was murdered, age 11, along with her mother Ida, my grandfather’s eldest sister, and many others, by the Nazis in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
She is one of the millions lost to the rabid hate the Nazis practiced, spread, and fed.
Each one of those millions lost was an entire lost world.
Each murder left a gaping hole where their lives and accomplishments, their stories, their loves and joys, their children and grand-children who’d never be, would have been, should have been …
My grandfather lost many in his family in the Holocaust.
My grandmother lost many in hers.
Other branches of my family lost loved ones, too.
Many families lost even more.
Some have no one left to remember. Many have no photos. No one to tell their stories.
So we must. As we can. Tell of those we know.
Remember all.
Little Sarah’s is but one face of many.
Hers was a life all its own. Snuffed out but not forgotten.
May her memory be a blessing.
May all their memories be a blessing. Six million. More. So we remember.
So we never forget.
Little Sarah, you were born but a year before my mother. The Nazis killed you, but they could not kill your memory. You live in each of us. The memory of your mother and siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles lives on, too. I see your face in my sisters and many cousins and nieces.
We are you.
And we remember.
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
Sunshine above
Tasty gold below.
A horse in a city field
Is contentment aglow.
Photographed worlds away
And a mere year ago.
For the Tuesday Photo Challenge: Animals
Photo: alexandra lammerink on Unsplash
She did not know how
To have her heart
Be known,
Other than to
Let her spirit
Be flush with
Hope,
And to allow her
Soul to
Blush bright
With the
Intent,
Even if
Her words paused,
Timid,
From the moment
She’d left
Home.
For the dVerse quadrille poetry challenge: flush
Photo: Jorge Lopez on Unsplash
“I am not,” she insisted,
“Obsolete.
Or not yet.
Not as long as I can
Vote,
And thus
Use my
Voice,
To oust threat.”
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Challenge: Obsolete in 24 words
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