(Photo: Amitai Asif)
They said farewell.
They said goodnight.
They walked into dark
From light.
Their hearts were sad.
Their eyes were bright
With tears that grief will soon ignite.
Her passing’s new
Her suffering done.
They walked with her as
One cycle ended and a new began.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Goodnight in 45 words
Dedicated with love to my aunt, whose funeral is across an ocean and a sea tonight. May her memory be a blessing.
“So, we go?”
James nodded. Better than pretending that all was as it had been. Nothing ever will be.
“It’s cold,” Maria held out two scarves. A third was wrapped around her neck.
“So, we go!” Benjamin pulled a hat over his head. “You take the middle, Maria and I will go top and trunk. We’ll trade.”
They’d walked a tree home one year when Mama lost the car. They all had cars now, but she would never drive again.
James reached for the first tree. Glanced at their list of in-need homes.
In Mama’s memory, a Christmas Walk-a-thon.
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
Photo prompt: Dale Rogerson
“All you have is this little wheelbarrow?”
Marsha nodded.
Shelly shook his head.
“I don’t mind how long it takes,” the despair in Martha’s voice was overshadowed by determination. “And anyway, this won’t be too heavy.”
Shelly shrugged. “You’d change your mind after you make a few trips pushing this rusty thing uphill against the wind.”
In the weeks that followed Marsha wondered more than once if her brother had conjured the wind just to spite her. Dust and grit found purchase in her eyes and throat. Her palms grew red, then raw, then rough.
And still, she pushed the loaded wheelbarrow through gravel and scrub brush and small canyons of cracked earth that manifested overnight upon the path she forged across the steppe.
Slowly the grave-marker took shape.
“I’ve brought the stones from our creek, Mama,” she whispered as she placed each carefully. “Your heart will never again thirst.”
For Crispina‘s Crimson’s Creative Challenge
(Photo: Rainer Krienke on Unsplash)
There is a scar ripped open
In the canyon
Of this wound.
Where sorrow has wound time
Around grief tighter than
Some
Assumed.
There are still pools
Of tears
Repeatedly
Bled
As future holds
Its breath.
To broken hearts
Peace has not
Come yet.
For the dVerse quadrille poetry challenge: wound
She shifted her weight and sand squeezed warm between her toes. Heated not by sun – the orb still far too distant in such early spring – but because she’s been standing still so long that the permeating chill under her soles relented to the constant pulse of lifeblood in her veins.
A bird called. Another bird returned. An insect buzzed a disharmonious song. It will be summer soon.
She felt her chest rise in a breath and her eyes skimmed the expanse of shimmering ground, patient, waiting for the tide.
Today, perhaps, he’ll come.
Today, maybe, he will return home from the wild, where waves rose high and ships dipped low to the ocean’s floor.
There was a writing in the sand. A code left by the crabs. The gulls. The seaweed.
She waited. Wavelets licked her feet.
Perhaps today something of him will wash ashore.
For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge
The day had been dreary so far. The cold. The damp. The boring wait for the car’s repair. The need to keep her body still and her mouth from chattering.
Gran did not let her wander. Or climb. Or touch things.
“You’ll get filthy.” Gran had stated. Like an ultimate sin.
At first Beth did try to argue. Daddy always said that filth is easy to wash off and that a bit of dirt was no excuse for sitting out good fun.
Gran did not think highly of Daddy.
“What judgment that man could have had in him,” Gran grumbled, “he’d given it up when he chose to leave my uterus early … and it only went downhill from there.”
Or up, Beth thought. He had promised to watch over her. Before the angels called.
“My Hummingbird,” he’d called her.
Her eyes rested on the sign. She smiled.
Hi Daddy.
For Crispina‘s Crimson’s Creative Challenge
“See there?”
Marie squinted against glare. “The windmills?”
“No.”
David’s finger shook along with his head, and Marie felt the wheelchair’s handles vibrate. The sorrow hit her, unexpected as always. Most days now she managed to surf life without being blindsided, but it was harder to do in this place, his favorite, where everything reflected the losses. His. Hers.
“The bird,” David insisted, his reedy voice robotic with timed inhalation.
His inflection was one of the first things to go, and its absence had robbed away a part of David that she’d adored from the moment he had first looked at her, dewy-eyed from birth, and mewled a symphony of baffled indignation.
“Ah, yes, the bird on the poles! I see it now,” she filled the space with words to compensate for his worsening inability to speak in sentences.
“Watching,” David exhaled, satisfied.
For the end? Marie silenced her sigh.
For Crispina‘s Crimson’s Creative Challenge
Note: Dedicated to all parents and caregivers, and to all who are navigating the throws of progressive illness. May you find peace, and space to breathe in, and may you know moments of joy and an abundance of love through life’s difficult path.
He left the house each morning as he always had, a bag with his lunch slung over a shoulder.
The harbor was no longer where he had to be, but work never was just an employment. It had been his world. Even more so since Marissa left to roam the realms beyond this world.
To him her current travels were as real as the ships that left for unseen places only to return with goods that others had stacked for his crane to unload.
One day he will sail to where Marissa was.
Till then, he watched each day unfold.
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
Photo prompt: © Roger Bultot
They will not be coming home.
She paced the few steps from her door to the deck’s edge and back again. She gazed up at the washed out sky. Watched as the shadows encroached on the small lawn to blanket the rocks in the graying garden. Her breath was heavy in her chest.
They will not be coming home.
With every blink, the hues were fading. Taking with them memories of laughter, of pitter-patter, of wet wool and hot cocoa steaming by the fire.
The telegram emblazoned in her mind.
The boys will not be coming home.
All color gone.
Note: Dedicated to all those who knew and know such loss.
Photo prompt: © Sarah Potter
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
“Remember when we used to come here all the time?” Lisa rested her chin on her palm, elbow propped onto the tablecloth, and dreamy eyes gazing out the diner’s window.
Her mother nodded, throat too full of ache to speak. She signaled for the check. Lisa looked so much like Gloria in that posture. The two had the same mannerisms, the same coloring and freckled cheeks, even the same tone. The niece’s resemblance to her aunt had been a source of joy. Still was. Always will be. But there was loss there, too.
Now that Gloria was gone.
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
(photo prompt – © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields)
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