The Longest Walk

July 11, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Things Kids Say, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Adversity, Appearances, CCC, Denial, Flash Fiction, Going home, Micro-fiction, Photo prompt, Poetry, Secrets, Trauma and Development 13 Comments

ccc139

The dappled path grew arms of shade to shackle her so that her legs refused to move.

Earth’s gravity cranked itself up and higher.

It needn’t be so hard, and yet each cell in her begged an excuse.

She couldn’t.

She had to.

She shouldn’t.

She must.

She wouldn’t.

She better.

Or else.

The tree-lined corridor – so outwardly calm, so beautifully straightforward – was but a hall of mirrors.

An amplifier of her agony.

For who would see it and believe her, when none had yet, and perhaps no one ever would?

The careful greenery imposed a form of blindness on others.

A willingness to only selectively see.

Appearances, she already knew, could become everything.

It made the manicured life into a wall beyond which no one saw. Or wouldn’t.

Leaving her to take.

Again.

As in every day.

The longest walk.

Home.

And its unspoken of.

Relentless,

Tortures.

For Crispina‘s Crimson’s Creative Challenge

Dedicated to all who live behind the veils of appearances and are kept hidden in plain sight under a mirage of perceived privilege. Abuse knows no socioeconomic boundaries. Torment knows no race, no age, no god, no faith, no intellect, no education, no level of income. May you be heard. May you find a way to be safe.

Pathfinder

October 1, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Adversity, Apprehension, Bus ride, CCC, Creative writing, Flash Fiction, Going home, Hypervigilance, Micro-fiction, Photo prompt, Wary 26 Comments

bus-interior-wet-day CrispinaKemp

It was going to be better once she got there. Not like last time.

She held her purse on her lap with both hands, knees together, spine away from the cushion and her body swaying lightly with the movement of the vehicle, as she watched the world roll ahead of the front window, indistinct in the liquid grayish light.

It’s been raining for hours. A persistent misty drizzle that had dampened so many of her earlier years. She shuddered even though the bus was overheated. Perhaps because she sat in her coat.

The driver leaned on the horn and she released one hand to steady herself against a possible braking. Her seat in the center of the last row had no armrest, but it was the only one with a clear path out.

She always needed to have an unobstructed way out.

And yet, there she was, going back.

For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge

Skyward

September 21, 2020September 21, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Meditations, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Reflections, Writing Tags: Creative writing, dVerse, Going home, goodbye, journey, Poetry, Quadrille, Sky, Takeoff, Writing Challenge, Writing prompt 20 Comments

They rose in steady hum of

Motors aiming to break

Clouds

And dispersed the waves upon the

Sand as life skittered

Aground.

They pointed nose into the

Sky with souls holding on well

And fast

As engines revved anew

And headed home

At last.

For the dVerse quadrille challenge: sky

The Street

June 9, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Creative writing, Danger, dVerse, Flash Fiction, Going home, Micro-fiction, Mystery, Night, Poetry prompt, Prosery, Teenagers, Writing Challenge 22 Comments

Photo: Robert Almonte on Unsplash

The night is not as I’d expected it to be.

The sirens are silent. The windows dark. The very air seems still.

It had been a close call. Too close, almost.

I glance at Malachi. He returns a tremulous shrug.

“Will we be alright?” I ask. I didn’t mean to say it out loud, but the words could not stay in. The sound — although barely above a whisper — boomerangs in my chest.

“We might be,” he mouths.

At least I think he does. I cannot hear much above my heartbeat thundering in my ears. Everything inside me feels tight. I don’t remember being so unnerved. Not since. You know. The other time.

“Will they return?” Fear dries my mouth.

“Who knows.”

We reach the corner and separate. The night breaths as I hurry home and we go in different directions down the imperturbable street.

For the dVerse prosery challenge

Prosery prompt: “We go in different directions down the imperturbable street” (from the poem “An Aspect of Love, Alive in the Ice and Fire” by Gwendolyn Brooks)

Home Sweet Home

April 30, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: CCC, Cottage, Countryside, Creative writing, Flash Fiction, Going home, grandparents, Homecoming, Micro-fiction, Photo prompt, Restoration, Siblings 8 Comments

cob-cottage CrispinaKemp

They stopped the car down the lane and walked the last few hundred yards, wanting to see the cottage unveiled.

“Grandma would be proud,” Tilly sighed. The roof had bowed in and the walls had extensive water damage the last time they’d seen the place.

“Not about the fence, she wouldn’t.”

Tilly grinned. Her brother never could let an opportunity to find fault go unheeded. And … the fence did need propping. “A stray dog or deer knocked it. Surely it’ll be easy to mend.”

“Hmm.”

Tilly looped her arm in her brother’s. The cottage finally looked the way she remembered, the way Grandma had maintained it all the years she’d lived there and until she had to go into care.

Once more it was going to be home sweet home.

“Let’s get the car, and my things,” Tilly said. “We’ll be bringing Grandma along, in spirit, if not in form.”

For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge

I Will Wait

March 4, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: 3LineTales, Creative writing, Going home, hope, Micro-fiction, Permission, Photo prompt, Promise, Waiting, Writing Challenge 17 Comments

three line tales, week 214: woman standing in dilapidated building

Photo by Jorge Flores via Unsplash

“I will wait for you,” she said. “Even in cold ruined places where wind blows in the refuse of the city and where more is broken than is whole. I’ll wait, so you can know I’m here when you are finally permitted to come home.”

For Three Line Tales #214

Golden End

February 9, 2020February 10, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Flash Fiction, Going home, healing, Micro-fiction, Relationships, Santo Tomas, Spain, Sunset, Therapy, vacation, What Pegman Saw, Writing prompt 4 Comments

Santo Tomas, Spain (Ricky Rew on Unsplash)

It was a golden end.

To the day. To their journey. To what they managed to do together, for the first time in a long time without bitter exchanges that gouged their hearts and left them both scarred.

The trip to Santo Tomas was an impromptu thing. The healing they’d invested in was not.

“We could go, you know,” he’d mentioned as she’d browsed to pass the time while waiting outside the therapist’s office. It was always an awkward time, sitting together in the ante room, aware that what came next was lancing boils and airing out things too noxious to attempt alone.

“Can we, though?” she’d replied, layering many meanings.

“I think so,” he’d said.

His hesitation, more than anything, was what had her agree.

The therapist’s hesitation, too. She wanted to prove the woman wrong.

She watched him jog by sun-glow. Her heart warmed. They were going home.

For What Pegman Saw: Santo Tomás

Backdrop

December 12, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Creative writing, Fantasy, Final moments, Flash Fiction, freezing, Going home, Leaving, Micro-fiction, Relationships, Science Fiction, WritePhoto 21 Comments

Photo: Sue Vincent

They were cold to the bone, but it did not matter once the light broke out to illuminate the edge of clouds.

“We’ll be home soon,” he breathed into her neck.

“I know,” she whispered, her teeth no longer chattering. She’d stopped feeling her toes so long ago she almost forgot she had ones.

It would have worried her, in the past. The risk of frostbite. Amputation. Loss of the ability to walk.

Not anymore.

They were beyond all these things now.

They were going home.

For the rest of time.

“How long?” she asked, fretting a bit in spite of herself. She never found transitions as easy as he had. Especially such big ones. Especially those that were irreversible.

“Soon,” his voice was barely audible but she felt it reverberate through her chest. The finality of it.

The knowledge.

His strength.

She sighed, and though he did not move she knew that he was smiling.

Another moment passed. Or perhaps it was an hour. She’d lost track of time now that it made no difference.

As her body chilled, her eyes stayed focused on the shimmering curtain of light. Its movement became the backdrop to the last views she will ever have of Earth.

Before it neared enough to carry them.

Home.

For all the eras yet to come.

For Sue Vincent’s Write Photo Challenge

The Farm

December 8, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Ancestry, being yourself, Buffalo, Canada, Family, First Nations, Flash Fiction, Folklore, Going home, History, Micro-fiction, Saskatchewan, What Pegman Saw 33 Comments

Photo: Weston MacKinnon on Unsplash; Saskatchewan, Canada

“Look Papa!” the boy’s voice rose in excitement.

“I see,” the man replied. His deep voice resonated in the small space.

“You didn’t even move your head,” the young eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“I did not need to.”

The child exhaled and shook his head and the movement reminded the man of a yearling. Impatiently straining at the edge of youth, eager to race headlong into life.

The man eased the pressure on the pedal and moved his foot to the other, stopping the car.

“I am looking now,” he smiled. “Thank you, Son.”

The boy’s eyebrows rose but he asked nothing. They watched the buffalo together, the sun and field and beasts a golden-brown.

“Is this their farm?” the boy finally asked.

“It is their home,” the man replied. “The farm came to live on it.”

The boy nodded, his ancestors evident in his soulful eyes. “They are like us.”

For What Pegman Saw

Halfway Home

November 28, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Acceptance, Choices, End of life, Finding peace, Going home, Hospice, Illness, Photo prompt, Serenity, WritePhoto, Writing Challenge 24 Comments

Photo: Sue Vincent

She never grew tired of it.

Even if fatigue had become part and parcel of her every day. Of her very breath.

It did not matter. Her fatigue didn’t, that is. At least, it did not matter as much as it would have otherwise. As much as she knew it could. As much as it had in the other place, where there was naught but white walls and white squeaky soles on squeaky clean tiles and antiseptic air and officious hands and flickering images on a screen where well-dressed persons babbled about things that did not feel relevant to her in the least.

They’d urged her not to leave.

She left.

No regrets.

Not when the trade-off was brisk air and the smell of just-trampled grass and the scent of rain and the open vistas of the world rolling down into the horizon where the sun met the mountains and the sky kissed the ground.

No regrets.

Not with the play of night and day around her, not with light that flickering on her covers and the sun licking her fingers as she lay in bed. Not with a world that breathed and changed and lived and died and reemerged. With yips of puppies racing down the lawn. The hiss of wind. The chirps of birds.

Sure, others were concerned, or so they said.

She did not share their dread.

Death did not scare her. Nor did the warnings that she’d be too far from hospital to get assistance in time if another crisis came. For a crisis was bound to come, and when it did, she knew she’d be content to face it with her face to the hills and her eyes on the valleys and the snow-capped mountains where her soul would soon roam.

For she was halfway home.

More than half, perhaps, now that most of the sand in her hourglass had been shed.

It did not matter.

She was halfway home, content with whatever lay ahead.

For Sue Vincent’s WritePhoto Challenge