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

In Flight

January 7, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Meditations, Muse and Flow, Photography, Reflections, Writing Tags: A moment in time, Beautiful world, Birds, Flying, hardship, Persevere, PFTW, Photo a Week, Photo Challenge, Poetry, Tenacity, Wings 3 Comments

Photo: Stephen Forte

In the slight pause between

Flapping up,

Flapping down,

Live the breath

And the lift

That propel

To carry on.

For the Photo for the Week challenge: Birds

If Eyes Could Speak

December 21, 2018Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Photography, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Being seen, Give a voice, hardship, hope, humanity, Photo a Week, Photo Challenge, Photo prompt, Photography, Poetry, Stories, travel, Universality, Writing prompt 24 Comments

Photo: Dvora Freedman

If eyes could speak,

They’d tell of roads

No one should take,

And hardship that

Does not build,

But breaks.

If eyes could speak,

They’d share the stories

Of long paths,

That some must walk

With shattered hearts.

If eyes could speak,

They’d share hope, too.

For being seen

Brings light into

What one must know,

And one must do.

For Nancy Merrill’s a Photo a Week challenge: Eyes

Commuting Perspective

September 30, 2018September 30, 2018Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Photography, Reflections, Writing Tags: City life, Commuting, Going to work, hardship, Perspective, Photo Challenge, Photography, Sunday Stills, Transportation, World travel 2 Comments

Photo: Smadar Halperin-Epshtein

When stuck in stalled traffic

Or standing smooshed on the train

I remind myself how

For many

The commute is truly a strain.

For Sunday Stills: Transportation

Bedtime for Luna

September 5, 2018September 5, 2018Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, children, Difficult times, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, hardship, Micro-fiction, Separation, Short Story, Waiting 20 Comments

“So, remember,” her hand on the door’s handle. “Bedtime at 9, only one treat, brush your teeth.”

“And no opening the door for anyone,” he intoned.

At least it got him a smile. There weren’t many of them of late.

She tucked an errant lock of hair behind an ear and suddenly he couldn’t stand it.

“When will you be back?” He knew. He had to ask.

She glanced at the window. The court-order weighed heavy on her mind.

“When Luna goes to bed behind the mountain, I’ll be home.”

For the last time.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Tempestuous Times

July 30, 2018Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, WordOfDayNY, Writing Tags: cleansing, Elders, hardship, History, hope, MerriamWebster, Persevere, Poetry, Tyranny, wisdom, WordOfDayNY, WordOfTheDay 2 Comments

Photo: cmurrey, Flickr

“These are tempestuous times,” she said

And her strong hands wrung the laundered sheets

To squeeze out suds

As she would want

To push out infiltrated evil.

“I’ve seen hardship before,” she stirred

The linens

In the boiling vat,

Simmering the despair

Till it foamed and evaporated

Into bleached hope.

“Wrong does not last,” she rinsed

And wrung

And shook

And hung

The wash

Till it fluttered

Free

To dry,

Only the barest of stains

Still visible

In the sun.

Merriam-Webster’s word for July 30, 2018:

Tempestuous

This post continues the blogging challenge in which Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day, serves as inspiration a-la the “Daily Prompt.”

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