Photo: Amit Jain on Unsplash
She could not have guessed
What is right
What is wrong
So she just muddled
On.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Muddle in 16 words
Muddle On
Reflections
Not Welcome Here
Photo: Franck V. on Unsplash
You are not welcome
Here,
With your
Contaminated fear.
You are not welcome
Here,
With words that hurt
And terms that mean to harm, divert,
Self-aggrandize, and
Smear.
There is a bigger risk
In hate
Than in keeping
Near.
You are not welcome
Here,
If you weaponize worry
To steer
Away from empathy,
Away from truth,
Away from the real challenges we share
As we ride great distances
On this one
Sphere.
Call this by its name.
Not by the rhetoric
Of racist,
Misinforming
Jeer.
Address it not in
Murky swamps
That deliberately
Throw mud into the
Gears.
Humanity is better
Than your insatiable need
To infect the
Atmosphere.
We’re on to you.
We see.
We hear.
We will hold steady to what
Matters.
We support the hardworking, factual and
Compassionately
Sincere.
But you?
You are not welcome
Here.
For Linda Hill’s SoCS writing prompt: Welcome
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Pathfinders
Photo: Sue Vincent
They filed into the toothy circle, a long double line, holding hands over the green strip that split them apart.
The stone pillars stood, immobile, ever present, waiting.
There have always been golden fields in all directions. Wild, then cultivated. The rustling of the ripened plants replacing a hush that would otherwise feed unease.
For there will be no voice heard.
No word.
No song.
No shout.
Nothing said.
Just a long line of humility, stepping up the path and through the eye of the ancient circle. Waiting to be cleansed.
To be whole.
To be seen.
To walk on.
Ahead.
Out the other side and down the second path where a widening triangle fanned into the distant horizon, mirroring the measure of relief.
And from the far far spaces, well beyond the hills, the sound of voices, whispers freed, a humming on the breeze.
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Color Me Home
It would be the last place anyone would look, and the first thing everyone would see.
It made it perfect.
She always gravitated toward hiding in plain sight. There was equity in the blinding effect of what people learned to not see or did not know could be there in the first place.
How long would it take, she wondered, for her cover to be blown?
The longest had been almost four weeks. The closest call had her discovered before the first patch of paint dried. She’d almost lost everything that day, and the consequences were brutal, but she’d learned from it. As she had from every challenge and obstacle. Even those that were not meant to be instructive.
That was how she rolled. How she wrest back some control.
For now, this box of aqua perched on sand, seasonally emptied of its contents, was home.
The surf a lullaby.
For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge
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Taking Off
Photo prompt: © J Hardy Carroll
He packed his bags late at night, tiptoeing around the sleeping figures of his flatmates. His plan would only work for one.
Well, two, perhaps … But much as he wanted company, he knew from experience that the only person he could truly rely on was himself, and he couldn’t afford to add the caprice of another human into an already iffy situation.
He made his way through quiet side-streets, ears perked and eyes peeled. He would approach the lot from the back, scale the pole, rope and lug his luggage up, distribute the weight, check the dials.
Takeoff before dawn.
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
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The Bubble
Photo: Keith Channing
“It is the only way!” he insisted.
She shook her head. She understood his urgency but he’s been going on about a string of crises for the last two hours, and her bladder was threatening to win the Battle Of Emergency.
“Are you even listening?” his voice rose, reedy with strain.
She took a breath, curbing the depth of it as to not add to the internal pressure. There was no rest-stop in sight. She began wondering if the wall of a nearby metal shipping container would have to do. With any luck, no one would be peeking out their window or strolling by or who knows.
“I really have to go,” she tried.
He exploded. “Can you stop thinking about yourself for a moment and actually take this in?!”
Her bladder cramped. Did he seriously just say “take in”?!!
He was known for working himself into a tizzy, but his anxiety and whatever issues the current times awoke in him, did not give him license to be disrespectful. “Start the car,” she bristled. “We’re leaving.”
He glared at her as if she grew antennas, which she thought was hilarious given the circumstances and his ideas. Laughter began to bubble in her belly, but she didn’t think her pelvic musculature could manage the added demand.
“We can talk more about building your floating sphere,” she added, regretting her choice of words almost as soon as it left her lips, yet finding herself unable to conjure any other imagery. “But if you don’t get me to a bathroom in the next three minutes, you’ll have to wade through bigger waters than what this world saw during Noah’s flood.”
For the Kreative Kue challenge #254
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Flurries On The Wind
Photo: Julian Berengar Sölter on Unsplash
She twisted the frayed bit of tissue between her fingers. Tightening and unfurling, tightening and unfurling. Miniature white dots fleeted down onto her black-slacked knees like flurries on the wind.
He shook his head to clear it from the mesmerizing effect of the movement and its impact.
“Say more,” he prompted, hoping his voice would break the trance and end her silence.
She shrugged. Flurries turned a momentary snowstorm and she shuddered, brushed the flecks of tissue off her lap and raised her eyes to someplace between her counselor’s brow and the wall.
“I don’t know why I was surprised every time love started or ended,” she whispered.
He nodded his encouragement. This was more than she’d said in the last two sessions put together.
“I should have known,” her voice turned bitter, “that none of it would last. That he would leave. Again.”
For the dVerse prosery challenge: surprised or not
Quote used: “I don’t know why I was surprised every time love started or ended.” (Jane Hirshfield’s poem, “I wanted to be surprised.” You can read the full poem here.)
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Small Staple
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
Small and humble,
It fills bellies,
When there’s no
Choice of grain.
The green leaves,
The tiny fruit,
Pantry for
Times of pain.
For the Sunday Still’s challenge: #Close and #Green
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Night Walker
Photo: Martin Adams on Unsplash
She’d appear out of her bed
As if in dream.
An apparition in their kitchen.
A small figure levitating up the stairs
From the nursery,
A flannel nightgown sweeping over the cold floor
And her bare feet.
They might’ve wondered
Why she had become
A somnambulist,
Had they not needed to keep
Any odd thing
Completely clandestine.
So they latched the front door
High,
And kept the very secret
Of her night-walking
Under the covers
Of unspoken sleep.
For the Weekend Writing Prompt: Somnambulist in 78 words
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Things To Come
Perhaps it had been the mark of things to come, though till it arrived they did not know it (or, as some stated, they’d preferred ignoring the possibility).
There were so many explanations: Bad weather, a change in allocation, inability to keep up with need, aging infrastructure, decline in the number of those who knew how to fix things with handiwork instead of keyboards.
Of course, the sidewalks didn’t crumble overnight. It took years. Yet somehow people had dismissed a steady rise in ankle injuries. They merely shook their heads when accessibility was reduced to the long-legged spry. There was no outcry. After all, most people didn’t ambulate with strollers, walking-sticks or wheelchairs.
In the end it was the roller-bags that tipped the scale. What unconscionable disrepair allowed wheels to break in ways manufacturers won’t cover? People could not be reduced to lifting suitcases when they needed to go somewhere!
For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge
Na'ama Yehuda 
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