Warehoused

November 20, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Adversity, Captivity, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Making do, Micro-fiction, Tenacity, Trauma, Writing Challenge 56 Comments

Photo: © J Hardy Carroll

The cells were small. Sturdy enough to keep them separated. Aerated enough to keep them alive. Near enough to let them marinate in each other’s misery.

What the jailers did not foresee, however, was how they were just close enough to offer comfort. Fingers laced through fencing let them hold hands. Almost.

Oh, they moved to corners when anyone came. Pretended to hate each other. Endured each other’s fake bullying that so amused their captors.

But in the silent moments they sat close, back-pressed-through-chain-to-back. Their ‘caretakers’ warehoused them like animals, but the children’s defiance held: they remembered they were siblings.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Just A Crack

November 18, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Adversity, Challenges, coping, dVerse, Holding on, Imperfection, Keeping it together, Poetry, Poetry prompt, Quadrille, Worry 30 Comments

Photo: Andrew Buchanan on Unsplash

“It is just a crack,” she said,

“A splinter off of perfection.”

‘Twas more than that, she understood,

Knowing what effort it exacted of her

To keep her direction,

To balance scales just so

They did not tip life

And hope

Into utter disconnection.

For the dVerse quadrille challenge: Crack

In The Blackest Night

November 5, 2019November 12, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Meditations, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Adversity, Black, Childhood, coping, dVerse, Finding a way, hope, memories, Night, Poetry, Tenacity, Worry 12 Comments

Photo: Hongmei Zhao on Unsplash

In the blackest night

She woke

To hear the flutter of her

Heart

Singing melodies of courage

In her ears.

As the hours ticked

Long seconds full of

Ink,

And stretched worries

She had long learned how to

Blink,

She held on to

Wisps of memories

Mirrored in her unshed

Tears,

And recalled the echoes

Of abandon

In the giggles

Of her very early

Years.

For the dVerse Poetics challenge: Black

Life’s Cliff

October 28, 2019November 12, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Photography, Poetry, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Adversity, Challenge, Courage, Creative writing, Dreams, Finding a way, Jagged, Poetry, WordOfTheDay, Writing Challenge, Writing prompt 13 Comments

Photo: Smadar Halperin-Epshtein

Until you manage to get

Past the jagged edges

Of life’s cliff,

You’ll dream of rivers

Soothing through

The valleys

Of What If.

Till then you’ll hold on

To old anchors

That keep you

Safe from doom,

And luxuriate only

In dreams of

Rappelling out

Of your fear’s womb.

For the Word of the Day Challenge: Jagged

They Live In You

September 16, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Adversity, Ancestry, Angola, Flash Fiction, History, Luanda, Metaphor, Micro-fiction, Remembrance, Slavery, What Pegman Saw 33 Comments

Luanda, Angola; by Jorje sa Pinheiro

“Why is the top of that mountain rusty?” he asked.

His grandmother’s hand tightened gently around his wrist, then released it, almost in apology.

“For your ancestors,” she said.

He looked at her, uncomprehending. She had a way of speaking without saying everything she meant or with saying more than she meant and then cloaking it so it was still a tangle of implied meanings. He didn’t always know which it was. Or both. Her lined face was held up in what looked more like grief than awe.

“Grandma?” he asked.

“This rust is the mountain holding up the iron bled by your great-grandfather’s chains and the chains of those before him, and before, so many generations that the rust of those shackles rose up. It is the blood of the mountain and like the blood in your veins, it is them. They live in it. They live in you.

For the What Pegman Saw challenge: Angola

Delicately

September 14, 2019November 12, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Meditations, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Adversity, Delicate, healing, hope, Patience, Poetry, Relationships, Sensitivity, tenderness, Weekend Writing Prompt, Writing Challenge 12 Comments

Photo: Amitai Asif

She flitted gently by his head.

The slight bow noted, the sorrow that was there

But perhaps not heard.

She knew he had to hold himself up

All this time

That it was the only way

He’d learned.

And yet she could discern the hidden

Effort that it took

To rise against the gravity,

In times where drought of hope

Returned

Again and again and again.

She understood the energy required for

Making the Herculean appear effortless,

To constantly correct

The wobble under

Winds and strain.

She hovered for a moment

Letting a space of permission

Manifest

Before she landed, feather-weighted and,

Delicate

On his chest.

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Delicate in 106 words

Light Ahead

September 12, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Adversity, Depression, Flash Fiction, hardship, hope, Life Lessons, light, Metaphor, Micro-fiction, Photo prompt, Tenacity, WritePhoto 24 Comments

Photo: Sue Vincent

After weeks of gray and thistles and ceaseless wind that scraped her raw, there was light.

She could scarcely believe it at first.

The cloud cover had been so complete for so long that she’d began wondering if there was even a real sun still behind it. The revolutions of soupy daylight and inky nights felt equally murky as every step became oppressive. She had waking dreams of being lost inside a massive warehouse, a mouse in a maze, endlessly seeking an exit yet seeing none.

She wondered whether there was still use in trying. She was oh so tired.

Now there was a break. The sky spawned a cavity and the leaden heavens began to dissipate. She could discern a layer of ease in the distance.

And light, streaming like caressing fingers ahead. Showing the way home.

Note: Dedicated to the all-too-many who are staggering through their personal wilderness, caught in the molasses of gloom, and thinking of giving up — keep on, hold on. There’s light ahead, and we’re leaving it on for you.

For Sue Vincent’s WritePhoto challenge