Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
I watched its solitary fly by
And wondered if it felt
Lonesome for the many it had once
Belonged to
Yet left,
Or if it was a scout,
Holding a memory of a long-ago-known
Place to land
That others had forgotten
Or had misplaced the
Sense of.
Will it circle back to its own,
Flapping on the wing
In fatigued relief,
To let the rest know
It had found this night’s
Home?
For Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Anything that flies
The day dawned gray and there was threat of rain, but she wasn’t going to be deterred by a bit of dirty weather.
She dressed him in his powder blue slicker and packed a bag with this and that. She weighed the idea of leaving the cumbersome stroller, but at three, though the boy liked walking, he lacked endurance for it.
“We going to see Papa?” he asked as the train rolled into the station.
She hesitated. She was loath to lie to him.
“Not the one you know,” she answered finally. “Though he may become it. We shall see.”
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
Photo: Philip Coons
May the words wrap
Around you
In shade and in
Sun.
May a book grab
Inside you
To where stories
Abound.
May good tales sustain
Your
Every heartbeat
And sound.
May you find space
Aplenty
To create
Reading time.
For the Tuesday Photo Challenge: Sculpture
Photo by George Desipris on Pexels.com
“What’s wrong?” I burst into her room with uncombed hair dripping from the bath and my bathrobe hanging half-opened.
She was sitting in her bed, sheets all tangled, the pillow clutched against her chest.
When she said not a word, I felt the terror rise inside me, too.
She’d had good cause for nightmares in the past, but it’s been years since any of those had woken her in such a state. Why now?
“What is it?” I crossed the distance from the door in three steps but dared not touch her lest my hands make her remember other ones, a lot less loving. “Can you tell me?”
She shuddered as if coming back from a great distance.
“I dreamt I was the moon,” she whispered. “Vast and cold and deathly airless.
“and,” her breath caught, “I dreamt that he found his way there.”
For the dVerse prosery challenge
“It is time yet?”
Prissy frowned. Alia always never had an ounce of patience. “Look around. Does it look like it is time?”
Edna glared at Prissy. That girl would not recognize patience if it sat right in front of her and introduced itself by name.
“Anyone want a snack?” Deena reached into her bag and pulled out an assortment of wrinkled potato chip bags, a crumbling granola bar in a zipped bag, and apple slices that had seen brighter days.
Alia’s look of horror was so comical that even Prissy smiled.
Count on Deena to diffuse the tension, Edna thought.
They all had their roles in every little drama life presented. Whether like players on a stage or play-pieces on a chess board, she wasn’t sure. Only that they slid into their respective places with predictability that was both comfortable and disconcerting.
Perhaps not so surprising they would do so now, when it might be the last opportunity for it. Their dynamics were about to change forever.
As soon as it was time.
A door opened at the end of the hall and they all jumped.
“Alia Marquette?” a uniformed woman appeared. “Your shuttle to Mars is about to depart.”
For the Sunday Photo Fiction prompt
Photo: Dvora Freedman
“You’ll be the judge of it,” he said.
He held the door for her and she hesitated a moment before slipping into the passenger seat. She buckled in part out of habit and part as security against the anticipated whiplash of yet another disappointment.
He drove in silence and she was grateful for it. They were beyond words by now, anyhow.
Roadside scenery shimmered by through a sudden squall.
“We’re here,” he said.
She must’ve fallen asleep.
“Say yes, and I’ll sign the papers,” he breathed.
She blinked. How did he find her dream house?
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Judge in 95 words
She always went to the beach for a bit of clarity.
The movement of the water on the sand brought her back into her own breath. The rush of energy reminded her of the push of arteries, the pull of veins. The predictably irregular rhythm of the surf reminded her how ebb and flow do not mean that things will be uniform. They’ll come and go. Each unique. Each set its own and inseparable from what flowed forth before and what is following.
She could count on a wave and then another and another, on the rise and fall, the crash and wash, the small detritus that each leaves and yet is part of what had been and what will be and what just is.
Like life.
Like the muddy, murky, uncertainties of everything.
Where the one thing she could trust was that another wave will come, and that even the biggest wave retreats, at some point, in wavelets of resignation. As another one rolls in.
For Sue Vincent’s WritePhoto challenge
Photo: A.Katz
As the sun’s last light
Paints mountains
Red,
May worry find a safe
For stashing
Dread:
That morning might
Not come
Again,
That homes might turn
From hope
To strain,
And children’s cries
Will sound
In pens,
As they wake
More memories
Of pain.
For dVerse Quadrille Challenge: Sun
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
Stand up
To the dimming of
The light
By cruel
Injustice.
Be the lone voice
If you
Must.
Hold tall
Against the winds
That wish to
Break right
Into wrong
And form
Wrong
Into common practice.
Behold the skies
In blues
And clouded
Sorrow,
Even as you keep
Fighting for
Better today
And a just
Tomorrow.
For July Blues
Photo: Adi Rozen-Zvi
In the blink
Of an eye
And a lifetime,
On the wing
Fleeting by
For the one time.
For Sunday Stills: Creatures and critters with wings
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