(Photo: Laurenz Heymann on Unsplash)
They would have gladly helped.
If he had let them.
If only he had found
The key
To what his dreams
Put forth.
If only he had known
How to identify
What were so many
Opened doors.
Instead, they watched,
Helplessly muted
To his ears,
As he fumbled,
Lost,
Amidst a maze of what
Were to him
Opaque,
Endless,
Walls.
Their lifelines loose,
Adrift
In the current
Of his
Half-formed
Words.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt of: Key in 71 words
She tried. But still she could not see.
Not the way she should have. Not the way others expected her to. Not how they could. All crisp lines and sharp edges.
There was no focus to her sight. No defined hues.
No boundaries.
No wonder others thought she had no need for any.
She used to think it was her fault. Her eyes a reflection of failure.
She’d seen a doctor since. In secret, but at least this one was hers to hold in confidence.
Her optic nerve had never fully formed.
But her heart, she now knew, saw perfectly.
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
Photo prompt © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields
They didn’t know when Power would return.
When they’d be allowed to leave.
Only that it would have to.
Because it had been promised. And they’d been raised to listen. And believe.
The grid was down. The streets were bare. The shelves that once were filled to the brim were naked in the lanterns’ glare.
It mattered none.
When they had faith.
Power had said, before he left, the back of the car packed with goods he “had to take to the needier elsewhere,” that they were meant to wait, “indefinitely, if need be.”
An test of faith.
Till death.
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
(Photo: Gabriel Jimenez on Unsplash)
She was almost there.
The core of her was almost
But perhaps not quite. Viable.
It took so much of her. To form. To build.
To be.
To sift the valued from the wreckage.
The meaning
From the hurt.
That there was little left.
Yet.
For viability.
Nonetheless it was still in there.
Nascent. Waiting.
For the rain.
For the sunlight.
For the nourishment.
For what had already sprouted and was on its way
To the life
She was.
And could
Sustain.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Viable in 82 words.
It wasn’t the hunger. Or the cold. Or the worry that their bruises won’t have time to heal before another layer made lace of the colors on their skin, to serve a lesson in horror and morals for their kin.
It was, more than anything, the despair.
The utter loneliness within.
The feeling that there will never be another way to be. Another way to live. Another place to be.
For the Commune was The Law, and The Law was The Faith, and The Faith was the whip and the rope and the cellar’s dirt floor.
The Law was everything.
Until.
That day when someone – who some later said was of the lost who were forbidden to be let back in – breached the fences. Ignored the “No Entry” sign circling the fields. Climbed through the grasses.
With a lens. And later, with the law.
For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge
“So how exactly will this work?” Maria scanned the detritus left by the fire. Remains of a lifetime of work and investment. Gone. Shards and a handful of charred pots. Is all.
“We start from seed, as it were,” Steve pressed. “We get Dad’s old truck out of the garage. Use it as a wheeled nursery.”
Maria sighed. It could work, but was she even up to it? Where there’s a will there’s a way, Nana had always said, and it matters most where there’s little will with which to find a way.
“A willed nursery…” Maria nodded. “Nana’s way!”
Photo by: © Jan Wayne Fields
(Photo: engin akyurt on Unsplash)
“He’s not cooperative,” his teacher warned me when I called to find out more about the boy who’d been referred to me for speech-language therapy. “He’ll find a hundred excuses to not do the work.”
“Sounds creative,” I interjected.
“He is,” the teacher conceded, “but it is exhausting.”
For him, too, I was sure.
“You’d think he’d settle down,” the teacher sighed, “but it’s like he’s gotten worse.”
Al* had language-learning issues. He struggled to express himself, to understand what he read and what was read to him. He mixed up letters. He mixed up messages. Exposed to alcohol (and quite likely to other substances) in utero, his early childhood was marked by constant shuffling between foster-care and reunifications with his biological mother, until parental rights were terminated, and he became eligible for adoption. He’d never known his dad. Al suffered from asthma. He had difficulty attending but reportedly “no difficulty misbehaving.” He scuffled. He cursed. He broke things. He kept getting in trouble. He spoke little, read less, and his writing was filled with errors. He was in fifth grade.
The “settle down” was a reference to his recent adoption by relatives of his biological mother. Now that he was in a “forever home with family besides” he was expected to move on. He was expected to “make gains,” close gaps, and be happy. He was undoubtedly happy for stability. He was also grieving, furious, frustrated, and failing at school. He acted out. He shut down. He “did not cooperate.”
He’d had at least four previous speech therapists. The teacher informed me that “he hates ‘Speech.’”
“You don’t look thrilled to have another speech therapist,” I noted on our first session together.
He raised a single eyebrow so perfectly that I wondered if he had practiced the move in front of a mirror.
I smiled. “Speech can be fun …”
“It sucks.” He stated.
I nodded. “I hear ya.”
“So, I can go?”
“Good try,” I chuckled. “We’re stuck together for now.”
He shrugged but didn’t flee.
“I don’t do work.” He warned, testing.
“So let’s not call it work,” I agreed. “Let’s just figure out ways to make the other work you have to do, a little easier. Because I think you’ve had to work way too hard.”
He narrowed his eyes, suspicious.
“I mean it. And … I can understand wanting things to be easier.”
He shrugged. Crossed his arms. Leaned into the backrest of the chair.
I saw it as truce.
The next few sessions were like pulling teeth. His attention flickered. He vetoed some tasks. He tried to sulk. But he listened. And he didn’t disappear into the boys’ bathroom when it was time for sessions. He tolerated me, which was better than what the teacher (and Al?) had predicted.
We took it slow.
Then I brought Shel Silverstein’s poems to a session.
“I’m not a baby,” he bristled.
“It’s not for babies,” I retorted. “It’s also for grownups. The illustrations may look silly, but lots of this is about serious stuff.”
He folded his arms and closed his eyes. On strike.
Or not.
I read.
His eyebrows were knit together, but then his shoulders lowered, and he took a breath. He frowned. He chewed his lip. He listened.
When I finished, he opened his eyes. Held my gaze.
“Cool, eh?”
He shrugged.
“Poetry is like that,” I said. “I love how it can find words for things, sometimes.”
He shook his head. Twisted his lips. Stared at the book. Flipped through the pages.
“Want me to read another one?”
He shrugged.
I did.
I read three more.
He scribbled arrows piercing clouds.
The next time I saw him, he pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. Fiddled with it. Shy.
“You have something?” I chanced.
Shrug. He stared at the poetry book I had prepared for us again. Unfolded his paper. Refolded it. Coughed. Took a breath. Thrust the note in my direction.
“Can I look?” I asked. Consent is tricky with kids who’d had others decide everything for them. I didn’t want him to think he had to show me.
He nodded. “I write it.”
I unfolded the page. Eight wobbly lines of transposed letters in phonetic spelling. A poem.
“Can I read it?” I checked.
He looked up at me, vulnerable and holding up an olive branch of trust, “yeah, but … but not loud …”
(Originally published in the March 2022 issue of ISSTD News as “Arrowed Cloud – The Use of Poetry in Therapy” )
*Name and details changed to protect privacy.
She stood back to appreciate her handiwork.
A mix of tidiness and lived-in disarray. The books. The pillows. The cozy afghans on the couch.
“She’ll love it,” he said from behind her, and she jumped. She hadn’t heard him enter.
She leaned against his chest. Felt the thrumming of his steady heart.
“How do you know?” she fretted.
“Because it’s not about perfection, but about having enough support so that no matter how you wobble,” his hand rose toward the bookshelves, “you’re bookended by love.”
She kissed his palm.
“Let’s go get our new daughter, then. Bring her home.”
For Rochelle’s FridayFictioneers
Photo: Dale Rogerson (thank you for the homey, inviting photo prompt inspiration! This room makes me wanna curl up with a good book on the couch. xoxo, your NYNF)
They’ve learned to speak naught about it.
So well that they almost forgot it was. There. Tabooed.
She had tried justifying to herself later. How there had been much to cope with and such minuscule leeway. How choice never truly was, a choice.
But as well as she could explain the circumstances, she could less and less forgive. Herself for the blind eye that she’d turned. Them for making it so that she’d needed to. For making it so that they could not even talk of it amongst themselves.
The crushing price of secrets. A cost calculated not with arms and legs, but hearts.
It haunted her. Nowadays. Now-a-nights.
The shuffling beyond the darkened window. The locks. The cries. The scraps that weren’t really for the dog.
By the time she’d grown enough to contemplate a rescue, there was naught to save.
Her sister. Feeble. Gone.
For Cristina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge
They knew they’d need some help. They knew where to find it.
They weren’t very good at building anything, even less at securing it to withstand the snow, the winds, the cops.
Or so they hoped.
It was better to make use of what was already present.
What others, who had better skill and quite possibly better sense, had built.
Sure, some called it squatting. Some found them vagabonds.
But why not when the struts provided good foundations?
It was a pity, really, that so many did not understand.
The cops raided one night. Tossed the tents.
Kept the struts.
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
Photo prompt © Ted Strutz
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