(Photo: Lorenzo Fattò Offidani on Unsplash)
They told her to not
Make waves.
That to speak out is
Provocative
And that it is
Unladylike.
Unseemly.
And goes against the word of
God
As interpreted by
Themselves
Who see it as their duty
To
Control
Her.
They told her to be meek.
To atone
For the sins
Of
Eve.
She stood.
Unfurled.
Provocative.
As the Goddess made her.
Herself.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Provocative in 62 words
(Photo by Elijah Hiett on Unsplash)
The world was full of golden fuzz.
The sun shone on the meadow.
She let herself soar, up and up.
Her voice free to glide on from high to mellow.
“What is that god-awful noise?”
Aunt Edna woke, her voice a sonorous bellow.
“A yodel,” the child said.
“A bird in my throat sings the dandelions yellow.”
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt of: Yodel in 57 words
(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!)
(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.”
(Photo: Jon Tyson on Unsplash)
“We believe in freedom,” they proclaimed,
“So of course you’re free to choose!”
Then they added
As her lips began to show
Relief,
“Just as long as what you choose
Is what we say you must
Believe.”
“For after all,” they stressed
When she blinked at
The paradox,
“We cannot have you
Infringing on our freedom,
When it is
Your body for us to be free
To make the choices
For.”
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Paradox in 71 words
Enslaved persons cutting sugar cane on the Island of Antigua, 1823, (The British Library)
She fed them well so
They would
Sleep,
And silently
She gave the slip,
To all she knew
Yet did not sweep
Away the bite
Of whip.
She fled,
So the child in
Her belly’s keep,
Would not writhe, helpless,
In another person’s
Grip.
For the dVerse quadrille challenge: slip
(Note: Dedicated to all who suffered and still suffer under the yoke of injustice, discrimination, racism, and pretense. We can do better than this. We must do better than this.)
They were going to put them there to remember, they said. To frame the recollections of the community, so none of what had happened be forgotten. That’s what they said.
It was meant as a memorial of sort, they said. A referendum of the eye. Intended to draw the faces upwards and lend a sense of a somber chaos, carefully controlled.
Perhaps it was all that. Yet it was so much more.
For the installation was also meant to keep the chairs out of reach. To take away the possibility of seating. To have people stand and look and move on, rather than linger or make themselves oh-too-comfortable. Again.
Because it was the idleness – those in power believed but did not say – that had led to the gatherings and speeches and protests and that weekend party-turned-riot. People got too comfortable in using public spaces as if those were a right rather than a privilege. They sat. They lingered. They huddled together and began to think they should have the power to decide how they passed their spare time, where and who with they sat. Mutiny, it was.
The police were sent to squash it.
And put all the chairs up.
For Donna’s Sunday Photo Fiction prompt
Photo: Lancaster Ohio 1938
He was enthralled.
His fate decided
By those who bought
And sold
The humans they preferred
To see as lesser than,
In order to exact a price
For their own
Self-aggrandizing,
Once freed,
His slavery was still
Held against him
In deliberate inequity,
His struggles mocked
As ‘proof’ he hadn’t been trying
Hard enough.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Enthrall in 54 words
Photo: Inbar Asif
She could be
Truly carefree
When she strolls
The fine edge
Of the sea.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Challenge: Carefree in 14 words
Photo: Ofir Asif
Find wild places inside your
Self,
Where vistas stretch
Your heart.
Climb peaks you did not know
Exist.
Let freedom
Joy impart.
For the Lens-Artist Challenge: Wild
tucked away in the mountains
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