Top Terrace

May 16, 2021May 16, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Funnies, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Achievement, CCC, competition, Flash Fiction, Micro-fiction, Photo prompt, Pigeons, Revenge, Siblings, Top Banana 10 Comments

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Finally, the upper nest!

Getting it was not only about ousting the head of their band. Battling persistent bumble foot, Bellow Baggins was not much of an opponent anymore. The issue was the other wannabes who jockeyed for position. Not the least of them being Peg-The-Leg, a nest brother and beak in Squeal’s side since hatching.

It took finesse, skill, and a good bit of cunning to throw the competition off the ledge. Figuratively these days, but no less satisfying. For Squeal never forgot the terror of Flight-School (or as fledglings called it, Fly-or-Die days). Peg-The-Leg had the benefit of an extra nesting day and a bigger mouth. It had taken little effort for him to shove Squeal out. Almost to his death.

No matter. Time had been kinder to the peewee. Now Peg-The-Leg was taken down a peg to nesting in the eaves, while Squeal paraded a top terrace.

For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge

Unhollowed

May 15, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Adversity, Creative writing, Cruelty, Persistence, Poetry, Resilience, Resistance, Tenacity, Wanton, Weekend Writing Prompt 16 Comments

(Photo: Lucas Myers on Unsplash)

There was little in their heart

But ice

And calculated cruelty.

A wanton abuse of

Power.

Ribald actions of

A misery intended

To inflict.

The wreck they left

Of any who had

Crossed them,

Threatened to hollow

Even the hardiest

Protest.

And yet,

There were still some

Whose souls

Would not give in

To ugly.

Whose light

Resisted.

Insisted.

Persisted.

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: wanton in 60 words

Home, Sweet Home

May 13, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, City life, Everything's relative, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, friends, Making do, Micro-fiction, Opposites, Roommates 47 Comments

“There’s plenty of room,” Zoe insisted.

Easy for you to say, Dana sniffed. Zoe was five foot nothing in heels and reed thin. Dana sat on planes with knees bumping her chin.

Zoe slunk between people like an oiled spaghetti, unlatched a gate, and scampered down metal stairs.

“Wait!” Dana bumbled in her wake, apologetic. She must have stepped on five pedestrians’ toes and hit another with her bag.

The basement studio was airless, dark, and smelled of garlic and Bok choy. Dana was sure she could touch both walls with outstretched arms.

“Welcome, Roomie!” Zoe announced. “Home, sweet home!”

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Photo prompt: © Roger Bultot

Tethered To The Queen

May 10, 2021May 10, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Quotes, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Adversity, connection, dVerse, Escape, Flash Fiction, Freedom, Hunger, Micro-fiction, Moon, Prosery, Quote 34 Comments

(Photo: Andrés Gómez on Unsplash)

If only they had thought to mark their way, perhaps they wouldn’t have lost it.

Then again, the whole idea of running away was to forgo discovery. Leaving shiny pebbles would have made the whole endeavor be over well before it had began.

They trudged along. Bellies emptier than in hungry nights before.

There was a misery in a scrabbled-for freedom. And yet at least their torsos did not suffer the indignity of another whip.

Eliah’s stomach growled. He sighed. “Only mouths are we.”

“Who sings the distant heart which safely exists in the center of all things?” Lilah responded, distracting him.

The boy grinned through tired tears. He knew the correct reply. The moon of course.

He pointed at the sky.

His grandmother’s nod was filled with pride.

For one was never lost while their heart stayed tethered to the night’s reigning queen.

For the dVerse Prosery challenge

Prosery prompt: “Only mouths are we. Who sings the distant heart which safely exists in the center of all things? – from Rainer Maria Rilke, “Heartbeat.”

Not Quite

May 8, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Alone, Creative writing, Flash Fiction, Isolated, Loss, Micro-fiction, Society, Solitude, Suspend Judgment, Weekend Writing Prompt 23 Comments

(Photo: Kajetan Sumila on Unsplash)

He was, but not quite, a solitudinarian.

He lived alone. His homestead perched atop a bluff where steep trails provided an effective fencing.

He offered bare gruff care for stranded hikers whose calculations of the weather led them to beg shelter.

Townspeople cast shadows on his hermitage. No sane man, they insisted, would give up their company.

He differed.

He came down from the mountain only rarely, for provisions he could not otherwise procure, his expression ascertaining that friendship remained off that list.

And yet.

He loved. The one. Before.

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: solitudinarian in 90 words

Writing In The Sand

May 7, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Meditations, Memoriam, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: CCC, Coming Home, Creative writing, Flash Fiction, Grief, Loss, Micro-fiction, Patience, Photo prompt, Seashore, Waiting 18 Comments

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She shifted her weight and sand squeezed warm between her toes. Heated not by sun – the orb still far too distant in such early spring – but because she’s been standing still so long that the permeating chill under her soles relented to the constant pulse of lifeblood in her veins.

A bird called. Another bird returned. An insect buzzed a disharmonious song. It will be summer soon.

She felt her chest rise in a breath and her eyes skimmed the expanse of shimmering ground, patient, waiting for the tide.

Today, perhaps, he’ll come.

Today, maybe, he will return home from the wild, where waves rose high and ships dipped low to the ocean’s floor.

There was a writing in the sand. A code left by the crabs. The gulls. The seaweed.

She waited. Wavelets licked her feet.

Perhaps today something of him will wash ashore.

For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge

Make The Move

May 5, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Micro-fiction, Moving house, New Beginnings, Oops, Problem Solving, Realizations, Relationships 43 Comments

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Rupert had always taken things too literally.

Now she would be stuck with the same leak around the toilet bowl when the boys flush a bit too long; with the same creaky closet door that slithers nightmares in her dreams when Mat-The-Cat decides to make a bed of laundered linen; and with the crooked shelf in the pantry that requires a perfected fold of cardboard to ensure the flour box does not slide off.

It never was the outside scenery she needed changing.

She watched one half roll by and realized she did not care to wait for the other.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Photo prompt © Ted Strutz

Lost And Found

May 1, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Reflections, Things Kids Say, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Adversity, conformity, control, Finding your way, individuality, Personal space, Poetry, Resilience, Shame, Wayward, Weekend Writing Prompt 28 Comments

(Photo: Cameron Stow on Unsplash)

They said she was wanton.

That from a child she’s been, capricious.

Her mom would sigh. Her father, frown.

They loathed how she refused to bow.

Ungovernable. Resisting.

She was, to them,

A moral stain.

A failure

In contrition.

They had stopped speaking to her

Till she had learned submission.

The wayward daughter of the tribe.

The one who lost

Her compass.

Only they none of them knew

That,

In shunned space,

She finally

Found

Life scrumptious.

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: wayward in 77 words

The Seeing

April 30, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: belief, CCC, Creativity, Death, Family, Flash Fiction, grandparents, Life Lessons, Micro-fiction, Visitor 27 Comments

“When I die,” she’d say, “I will not be truly away from you.”

Both sides of the statement used to worry him when he was little.

“Will I see you?” He once fretted. It was the day they had buried the pup who did not last the night. The runt who never whined and did not wriggle by the time the sun awoke. They’d laid the tiny bundle under a small mound of dirt in the yard. And it was lost to sight.

“In a manner of speaking,” Grandma had replied, untroubled. “For not all seeing is done with eyes.”

He did not understand her then.

Or when she died.

He wasn’t sure he understood her still, with many years passed.

Her absence a hole in his heart.

Then he came across the giant burl.

And he felt her in it. Waiting. Smiling. Seen.

He carved her out.

For Crispina‘s Crimson’s Creative Challenge