Lady In Waiting

May 19, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Meditations, Muse and Flow, Photography, Poetry, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Adversity, Flash Fiction, Freedom, Friday Fictioneers, Hopes, Micro-fiction, Patience, Refugees, Tenacity, The Statue of Liberty 60 Comments

(Photo: Na’ama Yehuda)

If he could make it there, he’d make it anywhere.

It was the axiom he had placed everything on.

He held on to the promise when his body hurt from beatings. He played the image of it in his mind when emptiness of heart and stomach kept him from shut-eye. He whispered small encouragements to himself to drown the insults that insisted he was nothing.

For he was. Someone.

He had to believe.

The words she said.

About where he could be.

Himself.

If he lived.

So he did.

And lit beneath storm clouds, she stood, waiting.

For the day.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers (Thank you for using my photo as a prompt this week!)

Not Yet

May 17, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Current events, dVerse, Grief, healing, Heartbreak, Poetry, Quadrille, Sorrow, Violence, War, Wound 36 Comments

(Photo: Rainer Krienke on Unsplash)

There is a scar ripped open

In the canyon

Of this wound.

Where sorrow has wound time

Around grief tighter than

Some

Assumed.

There are still pools

Of tears

Repeatedly

Bled

As future holds

Its breath.

To broken hearts

Peace has not

Come yet.

For the dVerse quadrille poetry challenge: wound

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

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

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

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

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

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