(Photo: Karen Forte)
At the very fringe
Of hope,
And even as embers
Of warmth
Barely flickered,
A marginal way
Lived on
In her heart,
Its waves crashing
Full of breath
Against
Life’s rocks.
For Sammi‘s Weekend Writing Prompt: Marginal in 31 words
(Photo: Al Battison on Unsplash)
She could not help the pull of lore
And hopes that drew on her
Heart like a magnet right into
The polar
Opposite of what
She had been raised to
Know and
Want.
For how could she possibly
Be anything but
What she
Was?
For the dVerse quadrille poetry challenge
She knew from the moment she walked in that she was way out of her league. Her virgin palette was blinding amidst the well-worn, paint-that-will-never-come-off-anymore held by others. She felt blush suffuse her face and an even deeper shame at raised eyebrows and feigned disinterest. Apparently she did not even warrant curiosity. An outsider. A wannabe.
She almost up and left.
But she’d saved for months to afford the class, and she spent her last on paints and brushes.
The need to create pulsed in her blood.
She stood her ground.
Blending in or sticking out, she’d stay. She’ll paint.
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
She could not sleep for the excitement.
A dream come true. A lifelong prayer answered.
She lost count of the times they’d gone without, made do with little. They saved. They scrounged. They worked. They sought. They searched. They found.
Only to be turned down. Back onto the merry-go-round.
It was not for sale. It was too old. It was rotten. It was tied up in legal battles. It was too large. Too steeply priced. Too small.
She almost lost hope.
Then this. Beat up and needing some work. Their Goldilocks perfection.
He didn’t want to sell. His late wife’s boat. Her family’s name. Nope.
They begged. They pleaded. They tried to explain.
Finally … he relented. Perhaps they wore him down.
They drew the contract. Argued. Fretted. Signed.
The boat was theirs.
“You must rename her,” he stressed, pen in hand.
Of course.
Tomorrow it will become her River Run.
For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge
Photo: Caroline Hernandez on Unsplash
The least of hardship was when
She broke her toe,
Age nine,
Her youngest brother
Then a mewling newborn
In her arms.
She’d been pacing
Through the night
To let Mother
Recover some.
Ever the intrepid
Elder child,
Rose missed but
A step,
Taped her toes,
And walked on
Till the morn.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Intrepid in 52 words
The lights seemed brighter than usual that night. The music louder than remembered. The movements blurred. The words slurred. The heels on the wood rung jackhammers in his head.
He clenched his teeth and dug his nails into the worn velvet of his seat to keep from squirming.
She’d worked so hard for this.
The years of training. The months of practice. The weeks of rehearsals. The days of excited anxiety as the premiere neared. The long awaited curtain calls.
He was not going to let his daughter’s performance be upstaged by a migraine. Or a stroke. Or an aneurysm.
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
They walked toward the light. The brambles, the thistles, the burrs, the thorns — all attempted to snag and ensnare and scratch and mark them for what would be held as treachery.
Still, they walked. Some of them bare-legged and bleeding. Others somewhat better clothed, but not much better off once flaps of torn fabric opened windows to the ravages of all manner of sharp things.
They walked toward the light. The dark, the fog, the cold, the hunger, the fatigue — all conspired to force them to turn back.
They did not.
Not when the tunnel they had managed digging, spoonful by spoonful of rock-hard soil, hiding the scrabbling sounds under the cover of endless mandatory chanting, could finally accommodate a slithery passage underneath the electrified fence.
They’d been digging it for months.
Waiting. Counting. Hoping. Dreaming. Fighting against those who dismissed the possibility, against those who threatened to give them away, against the weighing down by those who’d surrendered to messages of futility and given up.
It had been a fluke, really. A careless corner of a printed flyer that the wardens did not burn completely. A few lines and enough to give them the potential for a plan.
But they had to destroy the evidence. And not everyone believed.
Sometime even they began having doubts.
When the light arrived, many of them cried. Surreptitiously, of course. Lest the guards see. Lest they be found out.
And when the cold bit deep enough to keep the guards huddled by the watch-station’s stoves, and when the hour was late enough for no more chants to be required, they wriggled, one by one, under and out.
And fled.
Toward the light.
Where the masses congregating in the desert could swallow them. Where they would be hidden in the flocks of floodlighted extras dressed in rags. Where their dust and grime and hollows under eyes, would blend in with the crowds in caked-in dirt and post-apocalyptic make up. Where their actual horror, worse than any movie, could be made less real at last.
For Sue Vincent’s WritePhoto Challenge
Photo: Ian Schneider on Unsplash
In the years full of sorrows
They held on to the
Joys,
From the years when the
Smiles were more frequent than
Oys.
In the years where
Frustration
Overtook hope or
Peace,
They held on to conviction
That life can evil
Resist.
In the years where the wrong
Bloomed in hate
Unconcealed,
They held on to the truth,
So harm may be
Revealed.
In the years where they saw
Order crumble,
Laws evade,
They held on and remembered:
Hope finds way,
Light’s ahead.
For Linda Hill’s SoCS prompt: year
I knew she was going to D.C. for the 50-year-anniversary of MLK’s March on Washington. She’d been in the original one. And on the Freedom Rides. I was so proud of her. I also couldn’t sleep. I wanted her to go. I just couldn’t rid myself of a nagging worry-worm.
“Just be careful,” I texted.
“XO,” she replied hours later.
I watched the march and President Obama’s speech on TV, a lump in my throat for the path and possibility of this country. I scanned for her in the crowd, echoes of concern in my mind, hoped she wasn’t hurting.
“I’m fine,” she said two days later, “just don’t be alarmed when you see me. I tripped when I got off the bus in D.C. Broke my wrist.”
Apparently she’d wrapped a scarf around her arm and marched. Then traveled many hours home before seeing a doctor. True to form.
Adding this clip from that day which stands the test of time in its relevance:
Note: True story from August 28, 2013.
For What Pegman Saw: Washington D.C.
Photo: Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash
It lingered, hidden.
It’s potential ever present
Yet hoped
To in deep sleep
Remain.
Till it found purchase
Someplace where the
Balance
Could not be
Maintained.
“It’s metastatic now,”
They said
And shook their head
And watched her deep breath
Rise
Along with the determination
From last time,
Returned.
It will be
What it will,
But even if equilibrium
Was difficult to
Attain,
She was going to meet
Life
Head on
Again.
Dedicated to those who are facing this challenge now: You got this. We got you.
For Linda Hill’s SoCS challenge: “-tast”
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