Photo: Atara Katz
She has come to inspect
The tent
The snacks
The gear
The rest.
A gazelle
Wearing smiles
And she’ll stay
For a
While.
Entertainment
It seems
Can be found
On a whim.
For the Word of the Day Challenge: Gazelle
The Gazelle
Life and love
Sisters Of This Earth And Sky
Photo: Dikla Nachmias
Ladies of the borrowed time,
Mistresses of undemanding,
Mothers bearing down the twine
To faithful understanding,
Sisters of this Earth and sky,
Daughters threading needles of
Life verifying,
Girls who hearts ignore —
I hear you roar.
Do know:
Together we’ll weave words
From crying.
For the dVerse quadrille challenge: roar
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Wingspan
“I will not have everyone out in the cold!” Mrs. M’s hands were planted firmly on her hips, and when Mrs. M’s hands were firmly on her hips, any who knew what was good for them knew to nod submissively, back up slowly, and give up.
Not Tim.
Sometimes I wondered if he had no survival reflexes or if he confronted the headmistress exactly because he didn’t care to survive.
“We don’t have to be out, out,” he argued.
Mrs. M’s cheek twitched. Oh-oh.
I backed up just in case. If she reached for the switch it would be best to not remain within wingspan.
“We can use the hot-house,” he pressed. “Sunlight and no wind. We’ll be fine.”
The twitch stopped. I held my breath.
“Most panes are intact.”
Mrs. M nodded.
I gaped.
Tim won.
Cramped orphanage or not, he found a way for outdoor play in wintertime!
For Crispina’s Crimsons Creative Challenge #61
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Up In Smoke
Minsk (Photo by Anton Rusetsky on Unsplash)
“These stacks look like a hand,” Bella rested her chin on the window’s ledge and gazed at the golden hues of sunset over Minsk. It was beautiful.
“A hand with six fingers.”
Bella scowled into the glass. In her mother’s tone she heard challenge, dismissal, and disdain. It stole the luster off the previous moment’s calm. She resented the coldness with which her mother marred everything during this visit. It felt like a smudge she could not wipe.
So she was surprised when her mother came to kneel on the bed by her, close enough to touch. Close enough to feel the trembling. Her mother rarely cried.
“Six fingers for the six millions,” her mother whispered. “And these clouds like burning souls against the evening sky. Everyone my mother had known. Our whole extended family. Burnt. Dead. Gone. This city will never be free of them, Bella. They speak on.”
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More Than Well Done
Photo: Caroline Attwood on Unsplash
She mixed and measured, weighed and watched, stirred and sprinkled, steeped and sliced.
She’d gotten every item ready. She made sure she had all the tools. She kept the temperature exact.
This one was going to come out just right.
She double checked each line. She’d compared reviews for different versions of the recipe, to ensure this one worked fine.
The kitchen fan hummed.
Her phone rang.
The house smelled of burnt garlic. She was deafened by the smoke alarm.
The roast was toast.
She could have cried. …
She should have known that her ever-hungry teenage son would devour it as is, as soon as he sat down.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Devour in 108 words
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A Different Kind Of Home
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
A moment
For the memory of
A different kind of home,
Where sun sparkles
On the water
And you feel your soul
Fold along the crease
Of rolling foam,
And where your spirit
Sings the song of places
It has long known
How to roam.
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The Parade
Photo: Mihai Surdu on Unsplash
It was partially because they needed to find something to focus on, and the months ahead stretched barren of anything worthy of looking forward to; and partially because they believed they had some yet-to-be-discovered organizational talents and this could be a good way to shine a little spotlight on them; and partially because they knew it was the last thing Mayor Perry would expect. The latter reason alone was worth the effort. Especially when it would be something he won’t be able to admit he was against and may even end up having to endorse.
So they planned a parade.
They enlisted friends’ cars for floats and roped in small sponsorships by neighborhood stores and minor celebrities. They tempted bands and cheerleaders from local middle-schools with free exposure and offered same for the martial arts students from George’s Judo (which, not to be outdone, was followed by the dancers from Teens’ Tap and Ballroom Ballerinas). They raised money (and attention) by holding bake-sales on stoops and organizing a popup donate-your-merchandise shop on the sidewalk in front of the library. They printed flyers and pinned them to bulletin boards then convinced store owners to tape some into their display windows, by telling them every one else already had.
Peer pressure worked.
Most people didn’t ask too many questions about why a “Celebrate Ourselves” parade was necessary, where it had been born or by whom or to what end. The general theme seemed good enough, and it probably didn’t feel right to be against celebrating who one was and what they belonged to and were included in.
They ordered “CO” shirts, stickers, and visors in neon-green, complete with an abstract sketch of a float-turned-banner-turned-thumbs-up to ‘carry’ the letters as the parade’s logo. They uploaded photos of themselves handing shirts to firefighters, visors to grinning grandmothers in the park, and an assortment of the stuff to slightly bewildered parents at the playground. The stickers were a hit with the kids.
They videoed themselves delivering a shirt to the mayor’s office, then sent the video to the local news, who shared it under the title: “The Mayor Celebrates ‘Celebrating Ourselves.'” Social media amplified it.
By the following morning the mayor was accosted by a reporter on his way out of the gym. The insistent young woman shoved a microphone in Mayor Perry’s face and asked whether he’d been asked to be the Grand Marshal.
“Not yet,” he mumbled.
An hour later they were in his office, neon-green shirts on, tailed by the reporter they’d tipped ahead of time for an “exclusive follow-up scoop.”
Soon enough a statement was issued and the news headlined: “Mayor Perry to Lead CO Parade.”
Sponsorships streamed on: The gym the Mayor belonged to. The bank. The local hospital. The Aerobatics Club.
Requests came in for satellite parades in nearby towns.
The national news picked the story. Talking heads nodded and argued the pros and cons.
Mayor Perry marched, neon-green shirt and forced smile on.
By the following year they ran for office, with the CO logo strategically in the background.
Celebrating themselves was fun.
For Linda Hill’s SoCS and JusJoJun writing prompt
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Embers Hot As Coals
Photo prompt: Sue Vincent
She could feel them.
That’s why she came.
Why she took every opportunity she could to escape the drudgery of sewing and hoeing and weeding and feeding and washing and threshing and mending and tending and all the multitudes of tasks that never seemed to end and somehow only multiplied.
“It’s life,” her mother had sighed, when as a young child Mayra had burst into tears of fatigue and frustration when yet another basket of wash needed to be scrubbed. “We rise, we work, we eat, we sleep.”
Mayra, a dutiful daughter, had just nodded and sniffed and bent to her work. But inside her a restlessness rippled. She was expected to grow up to be like her mother: solid and stolid and capable. The capable part she was on path to mastering, if painfully slowly. But solid she wasn’t, in her wispy willowy frame, and stolid she could not be, when her feelings and thoughts bubbled in her mind like an ever boiling pot that used embers as if they were coals.
She would boil over. She would.
If she didn’t manage to find a chore that allowed her to put some distance between herself and the village and to reconnect with the souls amidst the stones.
They calmed her. They reached around her with fingers as wispy as her hair and plucked the edges of too-sharp words and smoothed rough irritation off of her being.
Most people avoided the stones. “They are haunted,” they whispered, as if that was a bad thing.
Mayra said nothing. Perhaps it was something in her that needed ghosts to sooth the places that she felt would otherwise burst and cause harm. Perhaps her difference drew her to what others knew to keep away from.
Still she came.
In secret. To avoid blame.
It was only when she was about to wed that she realized it had been her mother who’d conjured errands out of thin air for her, so the child could manage some relief.
“For some, this is life, too,” her mother smiled.
It was a rare transformation of the face that often showed so little beside focus on the thing at hand, and suddenly Mayra saw the girl her mother had been, reflected in the sky-hued eyes.
“You, too?” Mayra whispered.
Her mother’s eyes twinkled. The berries. The mushrooms. The bark. The herbs. The kindling that could not wait till the morrow to collect. All those times when her own pot was set to almost overflow atop life’s embers, hot as coals.
“I did, and I do. It is our grandmothers there, helping you.”
For Sue Vincent’s Write Photo challenge
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Last One In
Photo Prompt: C.E. Ayr
“They’ll kick us out!”
Darlene shook her head. “They won’t know.”
“Dad will kill us if we get caught.”
Darlene sighed. Shirley was such a wimp. Never took any risks. Never had any fun. “We won’t.”
Shirley peered out of the RV at the shimmering pool. Darlene never met a rule she didn’t want to break, and somehow both of them would end up punished. “It says ‘Guests Only.'”
“We’re guests.”
Without a permit. Shame rose like hot bile. They were always the ones without, the ones left out.
“C’mon then,” she blinked away tears. “Last one in cleans up!”
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
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Portal To Tomorrow
Photo: Smadar Halperin-Epshtein
In the portal to
Tomorrow
Let the trumpets
Ring not
Alarm
And rush to
Harm,
But stop to the
Hubris
Of war.
In the portal for
Tomorrow
May those men
Who rashly
Spend
The life of
Others,
Know the call
Of trumpets
Often heralded
Only pain,
More gore.
Enough.
Enough.
No more.
For the Tuesday Photo Challenge: Portal
Na'ama Yehuda 
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