Unmovable

January 18, 2024Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Fair, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, hardship, hope, Micro Fiction, Siblings, Things Kids Say, Things Moms Say 33 Comments

“She’ll never,” Howey said.

“Still, she might,” Ron argued.

Howey shook his head. No use arguing. Ron couldn’t see what he chose to ignore.

Much like Mom, Ron was, if less pessimistic. Though Howey did worry that Ron, too, would ossify with hardship and time.

“If we did all the chores, perhaps?” Ron offered.

“She’d see that as us doing our duty,” Howey noted.

Ron’s face fell. He so yearned to see the fair!

“Maybe if we patch that roof she’ll thaw a little,” Howey added, seeing his brother’s disappointment.

“Thaw who?” Mom thundered. “Wash up. We go to town!”

For Friday Fictioneers

Photo prompt: © Jennifer Pendergast

Their Homecoming

November 12, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Determination, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, hardship, Homecoming, Micro-fiction, Stormy seas, Tenacity 41 Comments

teds-eye-view

The seas were rough but that did not deter them. Wet ropes dug deeply into palms, the ripples in rough fibers matching the wiry muscles that strained in their necks, shoulders, arms.

Endlessly, the night dragged on. The ocean swelled and sunk and breathed and coughed all around them.

Still they kept their posts, secured to heaving decks with belts and makeshift harnesses.

When darkness finally waned and dawn returned, the contours of the mountains rose alongside them.

They shook the salt from reddened eyes and readied for the final passage.

Their boat was broken, but their hearts were home.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Photo prompt © Ted Strutz

Forgotten Power

October 14, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Adversity, Better times, Cafe, Flash Fiction, Flower girl, Forgotten, Friday Fictioneers, hardship, Micro-fiction, Photo prompt 50 Comments

brenda-cox-merry-go-round

She took another sip of coffee. A small one. To make it last.

A dreary morning meant the outdoor cafe wasn’t busy. Still, the waiter would surely clear her table as soon as her cup ran dry. He’d already deposited the check to flutter underneath the saucer. Hastening her to remove the eyesore of tattered bags and unkempt hair from the establishment.

Her chest tightened and her hand trembled. She forced in a deep breath.

She used to own the place. In better days.

She could still see it, riding through her mind’s eye. Her colorfully beloved Flower Power Cafe.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Photo prompt: © Brenda Cox

Light Ahead

September 12, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Adversity, Depression, Flash Fiction, hardship, hope, Life Lessons, light, Metaphor, Micro-fiction, Photo prompt, Tenacity, WritePhoto 24 Comments

Photo: Sue Vincent

After weeks of gray and thistles and ceaseless wind that scraped her raw, there was light.

She could scarcely believe it at first.

The cloud cover had been so complete for so long that she’d began wondering if there was even a real sun still behind it. The revolutions of soupy daylight and inky nights felt equally murky as every step became oppressive. She had waking dreams of being lost inside a massive warehouse, a mouse in a maze, endlessly seeking an exit yet seeing none.

She wondered whether there was still use in trying. She was oh so tired.

Now there was a break. The sky spawned a cavity and the leaden heavens began to dissipate. She could discern a layer of ease in the distance.

And light, streaming like caressing fingers ahead. Showing the way home.

Note: Dedicated to the all-too-many who are staggering through their personal wilderness, caught in the molasses of gloom, and thinking of giving up — keep on, hold on. There’s light ahead, and we’re leaving it on for you.

For Sue Vincent’s WritePhoto challenge

Merry-Go-Round

February 27, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Photography, Reflections, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Commitment, Determination, Family, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, hardship, History, Micro-fiction, Route 66, travel 48 Comments

Photo prompt © Jean L. Hays

“Used to be a zoo,” Ol’ Joe stuffed his cheek full of chewing tobacco. No frowning from Mama could make him give it up.

I gazed at the empty parking lot. We kept the market open by sheer willpower and another mortgage.

Mama often argued it was money down the drain, but Pops would shake his head. “History is a merry-go-round, Penny. It’ll come back. We just have to hang in there a little longer.”

Then the two of them would look at Ol’ Joe, and I knew: closing the business would kill him. Grandpop’s life was tied into Route 66.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Windowed

January 10, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Photography, Reflections, Writing Tags: Flash Fiction, hardship, hope, Micro-fiction, Old, Personification, Photo Challenge, Photo Fiction, Photography, time, VJWC, Windows, Writing prompt 16 Comments

Photo: Inbar Asif

“They’re all old,” the guide gestured, “but some are worse off than others, for they are windowed.”

“Age does not make a building old,” he explained. “Even if sooner or later years form spider webs of fine cracks on every wall, those are just realities built by time. The product of life.”

“But these ones,” his hand rose in half-salute, half-point toward a row of especially dilapidated shutters, “they are windowed.”

When our faces must have told him we still hadn’t the story he’d wanted be told, he sighed and took pity on us. So privileged we had to be to not have lived what would have let us understand the depth of meaning in his words.

“Rooms empty of everything but ruined dreams. Windows widowed of hope. Houses like these go beyond broken relics. Some had gone so long bereft of young ones to gaze through their portals in a waking dream, that short of a miracle to breathe life back into them, they are windowed: dried to the bone of sound, stripped of souls, ready to fall.”

For V.J.’s Weekly Challenge: Windows