(Photo: Jordan Ladikos on Unsplash)
I am NOT,
She insisted,
Capricious
Or blind.
I am bold.
I am loud.
I am the life of
The crowd.
I speak up.
I won’t hush.
My decisions
May clash.
My opinions indeed
Tend to
Unwind,
And it’s true that
I’m good at
Changing
My mind.
But I am not,
(At this moment)
Arbitrarily
Inclined.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: capricious in 55 words
The sun beat on his nape and his shirt stuck to his body, too wet to do any good in absorbing the sweat that trickled maddeningly down the center of his back and soaked the waistband of his pants.
His arms ached. Granite did not easily yield.
The soft ripples of the water mocked him, parading a breeze he did not feel. The pillar blocked what small air movement could be had. To add insult to injury, the hot stone reflected the stifling heat back at him. The path was an oven.
A dragonfly skimming the river caught his eye and he paused, mallet in mid-air and chisel in position, muscles bunching under the folds of his damp sleeves.
What if? he pondered.
He shook the thought out of his mind. Let the mallet land.
Who knew what lurked under the surface of seemingly inviting water. Better hot than drowned.
For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge
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
Photo: Burst on Unsplash
She figures it would be okay.
She figures it would do.
She’ll find her schedule and get back,
Within a month or two.
She figures she could do the task.
She figures it is fine.
She’d done a thing like that before,
Not quite, but in outline.
Still, she figures it a breeze.
She figures she’d succeed.
Even when history, at best,
Is wondering if indeed.
She figures this, she figures that
In neutral all her wheels,
And it becomes impossible
To not begin to feel,
That maybe it’d be easier
To let them bushes be
They’re beat from hedging here and there
And wishing they could flee!
Note: This was really just for fun and isn’t about (ahem) anyone … So similarity to any individual is (sort of) coincidental … 😉 Dedicated to all the ‘he’ and ‘she’ and ‘you’ and ‘they,’ who won’t say yea and won’t say nay, and leave us all in limbo every day …
For Linda Hill’s SoCS challenge: figure
Photo: Willie Fineberg via Upsplash, 10th St. Bridge, Pittsburgh, PA
She waited.
One more step and she’d have gone more than half-way across, but she found herself unable to move further. She sat on the asphalt, frozen by cemented legs.
So she waited. It was early, but sooner or later something will come by and she’d find out the price of her betrayal.
All her life she’s been bordered by this bridge, the yellow metal rising like a sun in her horizon: untouchable, unapproachable, dangerous.
They were raised to never cross it.
“Evil lives beyond this bridge,” her father had preached in daily sermons in their basement, the family huddled on aching knees and wreathed by incense, fear, and smoking wicks. “Leave here and your soul will be eternally forsaken. Abandon my teachings and you will not be saved.”
Well, she’d had enough. She could tolerate no more of his invasive ‘instruction.’
And she was ready.
To not be saved.
For What Pegman Saw: Pittsburgh, PA
Photo: Philip Coons
Which way next?
He requested,
Will it be up
Or down?
Are we headed
To Nature
Or perhaps
Sutherland?
Will we go
With the horses
On the bridle path left,
Or take the loop
With the birders
And turn right
At the cleft?
For the Which Way Challenge
Photo: Bryan Schneider on Pexels.com
“How does it look?” she twirled,
And I knew she was asking about
A lot more
Than the dress.
“It looks really great,” I answered,
And she knew
It was about
A lot more than
Her silhouette,
Or how the fabric hugged
Her curves.
“Then I’ll take it,” she said.
And we smiled because
We both knew
It meant she will take him, as well.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Silhouette in 65 words
“I am not going!”
They cannot send him to that miserable hut where there’s no electricity, no running water, creepy crawlies, and no internet. Even monks have internet. He was going to be worse off than a monk!
His father sighed. “Aitona Antton needs help and Osaba Alesander is still recovering from his motorcycle accident.”
“So I need to lose a leg to get out of this?” Danel grumbled.
His father’s sharp inhale told him he’d gone too far.
He shrugged apology. He was in enough trouble. Ditching school, hanging out “with the wrong crowd.” It was exile or jail.
“He’s your great-grandfather,” his father sounded tired, and not just from spending nights at Uncle Alesander’s bedside. “You used to love visiting him.”
“Before Birramona died …” Danel stopped. The remote homestead was awfully quiet without his great-grandmother. How much more so for Aitona-handia?
He sighed. “At least I like goat-cheese.”
For What Pegman Saw
(Basque glossary – Aitona: Grandfather; Aitona-handia: Great grandfather; Birramona: Great grandmother; Osaba: Uncle)
Photo: Atara Katz
He shook his head
At jam and bread
Objected to any other
Kind of spread
And lectured mommy
From his seat
That cookie’s the only
Thing to eat.
For The Daily Post
“How will I know?” the girl hung spectacled green eyes on me. Teeth aglitter with pastel-colored braces bit her lower lip. “What if I wait till it’s too late?”
It was decision time for Summer Camp and she was fretting.
Should she go to the same camp she’d gone to twice already, the camp her cousin goes to, and where several of her classmates will be? She loved it there. It was familiar. It was only three hours away from home. There was a lake and zip-lines and horseback riding. She was going to choose her best friend from last summer as a bunk-mate. It felt like another home.
Or … should she go to the other camp … the one she’d heard of last year but by then already had no openings? The science camp sounded like everything she’d ever want … but now the choice – and possible consequences – became real. That camp was half-way across the continent. It was on a campus, not in a forest. There’d be no one there she knows.
“My friends say I’m crazy because who wants school when there’s finally no school,” she sighed. Her finger twirled the edge of an auburn lock. Twist, hold, release; twist, hold, release. I thought of how the movement mirrored her dilemma … To hold on or to let go, to keep close or to let loose.
A difficult concept at any age, let alone at eleven.
“Hmm …” I noted. It wasn’t my input this child needed, just my ear.
“It’s not like school!” she stressed, a bit defensively. “It’s interesting! Also, they have summer camp activities. A pool, and trips, even arts and crafts. … Well, the crafts are more like, robotics and such, but that’s still crafting stuff, isn’t it?”
I nodded.
She took a deeper breath. “And I like science … They have a whole week about space. We’ll even get to visit a real observatory!” Her eyes shone as if they were already reflecting several constellations, and she sat straighter. Then she sagged. “But I don’t know anyone.”
“Not yet,” I noted. “I gather this won’t last.”
The auburn curl twirled, corked, released. “Yeah … There were a lot of kids I didn’t know in the other camp, especially the first time. But …” the big green eyes widened as the core of doubt unmasked. “What if everyone there is, you know, dorks and nerds and such?”
My eyebrows rose, amused. “And if they are? …”
She frowned but then a pastel-braces grin appeared. “Well … then I’ll fit right in…”
For The Daily Post
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