The Shut One

May 6, 2022Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: CCC, Childhood trauma, Choice, Dysfunction, Flash Fiction, Micro-fiction, Photo prompt, Regret, Secrets, Taboo, Unspoken 9 Comments

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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

A Broken Wing

January 23, 2021January 23, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Broken, Creative writing, Current affairs, Dysfunction, Find your truth, healing, Lost, Poetry, Repair, Truth, Weekend Writing Prompt 9 Comments

(Photo: Michael Carruth on Unsplash)

They stumbled

Broken

On the wind,

Dragging behind

A shattered wing.

Still chanting with

The roar of

Mobs,

Dispersed a faction

That from the

Truth’s been

Robbed.

Their memory

Fogged

By lie’s

Remorse,

Will they attempt to

Correct course?

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Faction in 39 words

Good Fortune

February 2, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Childhood Adversity, China, Dysfunction, Family, Flash Fiction, loneliness, Making do, Micro-fiction, new year, What Pegman Saw, Writing prompt, Xinhua 24 Comments

Photo: Xinhua County, China (Wikipedia)

It was the busiest time.

His loneliest.

He sought good fortune in small things. Mostly because it was absent from the big ones. There was always some disaster to contend with: illness, sorrow, loss.

He was born unlucky. His mother pushed by the side of the road because he’d come so quickly. He was blamed for his rash emergence. For her illness. For her early death. Blamed in the not-so-subtle ways that used words like blades.

“You always were impatient,” his grandmother would say. “Show too-little respect.”

He knew his grandmother resented his emerging like a peasant in the dirt when she had clawed her way out of the rice-fields. He had no response.

“Be grateful that you have enough to eat,” she’d frown. “Unlucky boy.”

Xinhua offered work. He fled.

The letter said that his grandmother had died.

New Year approached. His good fortune was to spend it alone.

For What Pegman Saw: Xinhua, China

You’ll See

December 11, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Denial, Domestic Violence, Dysfunction, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Micro-fiction, Realizations, Relationships, Too late, Violence 44 Comments

“You’ll see,” he lifted the mallet to strike again.

She cringed as plaster and glass and bits of home clattered to the ground. Every resonating thud another shattering, another ruin, another wound that would not heal.

She bit her lips and knew she’ll never be the same.

For not stopping him. For not standing up to him. For not listening to all who’d warned her that he was a loose cannon who’d bring only sorrow. For insisting she loved him.

She saw now.

And stood silent as his mallet dented will. Her life in shards, devoid even of tears.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Note: Dedicated to all who live with violence and do not know a way out into help. Know that there is always hope, that you deserve a chance to heal, and that you need not carry shame.