Initiation

April 25, 2021April 25, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Meditations, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Accolyte, CCC, Creative writing, Flash Fiction, Intiation, Mentor, Micro-fiction, New Beginnings, Photo prompt, Rite of passage, Writing Challenge 18 Comments

“Close your eyes. Feel the levers of the earth move with you,” Moria deposited the words like diamonds lined on velvet cloth.

Lianne obeyed the first. Tried hard for the second. But all she felt were the tremors in her body, bare skin shuddering against penetrating morning chill. And the fear.

“Breathe in the cold, breathe out the worry.” The old woman’s voice affected little compassion, yet there was no shaming in it. Just instruction.

Lianne tried, but her shaking only intensified. Perhaps I am not ready, she fretted.

“You are ready,” Moria stated.

Lianne gasped. Could her mentor read her mind?

“No, but I’ve seen enough initiates.”

The elder’s chuckle, puncturing the solemn task, somehow eased Lianne’s mind. Her body calmed. Her eyes relaxed behind the wrap. Her toes curled around the softness of the mossy ground. The bottom step offered a damp welcome.

“Better. Now climb.”

For Crispina‘s Crimson’s Creative Challenge

Her Ants

April 24, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Professional Development, Reflections, Speech Language Pathology, Writing Tags: Briefly, Creativity, Daily grind, Focus, imagination, learning, Making do, Poetry, Restless, Weekend Writing Prompt 22 Comments

(Photo: Hans-Peter Gauster on Unsplash)

She has ants

In her pants.

Restless thoughts

Writing plots.

No surprise

Her brain fries,

Daily grind

Flying blind.

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: restless in 19 words

The Bobblins

April 21, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Creative writing, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Interpretation, Micro-fiction, New Beginnings, Photo prompt, Possibilities, Science Fiction 51 Comments

The moon hid on the night they lit the Bobblins. Nature’s cold dark shoulder. Though Gary said it was Luna’s way of lending them the main stage free of luminescent interference.

Renee still felt a shudder run down her spine.

It was the depths of it.

The weight of memories that bobbed and swayed and listed ever so slightly over the mirrored pond.

Even the wind ceased. For the moment.

Was it, too, leaving the stage free of routine rustling, the air’s microphone open to the whispers of the babies, cocooned in color coded pastel uteri, waiting to be born?

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Photo prompt: © David Stewart

Tiny Tidings

April 11, 2021April 11, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Anticipation, CCC, End of Winter, Flash Fiction, flowers, hope, Micro-fiction, Photo prompt, Primrose, Spring, Tenacity 11 Comments

The dreary times were soon to pass.

No matter that her breath still steamed both outdoors and inside the drafty house. No matter that her red fingers barely bent with swelling and that the chilblains on her toes still burned and ached and itched. No matter that she took so long to warm come night that she almost despaired of sleeping.

The dreary times were soon to pass.

She knew.

True, it was still frosty.

But the cold was dying.

She knew, because the ice formed only on the very edges of her washbasin and because what frost adorned the ground in the morning would transmute into miniature mirrors of dew by the time the sun rose higher in the sky.

And because she saw the primrose.

Blooming.

Out there.

In audacious glee.

If the tiny flowers could endure the remnants of frigidity, so could she.

For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge

Spree Time

April 10, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Things Kids Say, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Adversity, Creative writing, Dumpster, Flash Fiction, Food, Forage, Life Lessons, Micro-fiction, Poverty, Survival, Weekend Writing Prompt 23 Comments

(Photo: David Libeert on Unsplash)

No wallet? No problem.

He’d lived without one as a child and did not remember being hungry. Or at least, not so hungry that he could not muster energy to wrangle grub from whatever lay around.

His grandmother had taught him. Raised through famine she had become an expert forager. There were few edible things she did not recognize or know how to procure.

“If you’re awake, you can find food,” she’d say.

He was awake.

It was time to dumpster dive.

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Forage in 82 words

A Rare Root

April 9, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, adoption, Family, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Looking for answers, Micro Fiction, Roots, Secrets, Shame 42 Comments

It took her sixty years, but she finally did manage to maneuver the tangled maze of history and silence.

“Why do they make it so difficult?” she had demanded one day, flooded with frustrations.

“Shame, I suppose,” the woman at the records office had shrugged.

And a shame it was.

One that too many women carried, and too many cultures reinforced.

Sealed hopes.

But shame could not, in the end, keep her story from being told.

She watched the ancient lady in the market. Half-bent. Wholly recognizable.

Her birth mother.

A rare root unfurled inside her heart. Sprouted. Took hold.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Photo prompt © Brenda Cox

Everything

April 5, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Meditations, Muse and Flow, Photography, Poetry, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Adversity, Allegory, dVerse, Fruit, hope, Patience, Poetry, Poetry prompt, Quadrille, Wine 28 Comments

(Photo: Inbar Asif)

It was everything

To her

To tend the naked vines that sprawled

Across her soul,

And through the long cold

Winter

To let the sun pour

Over

The sprawling expanse of not-yet-sweetness,

As she hoped

And prayed

For fruit

Ripening amidst abundance

Into wine.

For the dVerse poetry quadrille challenge: Wine

Mary Quite Contrary

April 3, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Funnies, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Reflections, Writing Tags: Absurd, Argumentative, Contrary, Current events, Just because, Poetry, Refusal, Rhyme, Stubborn, Weekend Writing Prompt 21 Comments

(Photo: Andre Hunter on Unsplash)

She was Mary

Quite contrary.

She refused to read what others wrote

And claimed all facts are anecdotes,

And when food was on her plate

She’d allow it to stagnate,

And then predictably complain

That she was made to abstain.

Any piece of news she heard

She declared to be absurd,

And if science dared be presented

She turned extra discontented.

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Absurd in 61 words

Limbo

April 2, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Adversity, being yourself, Breathing Space, CCC, Contentment, Flash Fiction, Growth, Micro-fiction, Overgrowth, Photo prompt, Self-acceptance 10 Comments

(Photo: Crispina Kemp)

He leaned back and sighed in contentment.

It was never a simple thing, to find comfort.

He sighed again. Just for the pleasure of it.

A bird chirped over his head, and he lifted his chin to greet it.

“You got it, Feathered Friend,” he smiled.

Birds understood the impossibility of confinement. How one needed room. To fly. To move. To preen. To be. To keep balance.

It was not a simple thing, to find space for one’s wingspan.

Especially not for his.

“Daddy Long Legs,” people had called him, and not with kindness. “Spindly Spider Man.”

He couldn’t help his lanky limbs, how his pituitary did something that made his long bones longer and lacked a way to let them know he was past growing age.

How long? He didn’t know.

Limbo sighed, stretched his legs, and rested his feet on the stump.

One day at a time.

For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge