Photo: Atara Katz
Underneath the soft plumage
And pretty colors
Afield,
Resides a strength to protect
From those who violence
Wield.
Underneath the pink top
The hat of power
Revealed,
Live truths of how both
Softness and thorns
Are required
To be healed.
For the Sunday Stills Challenge: Make mine pink
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
Take heart
Even when reality
Would bleed it dry
With injustice
And stale pride.
Be heartened
By the strength
Of those who wait out
The belligerent
And will not see
Truth and decency
Denied.
For Cee’s Black & White Photo challenge
Photo: Inbar Asif
As we hold endless heartache
Of scandal, war, crime, abuse
May we also remember
Gentler waves, kinder views;
So the holes rent by hardship
Will not make us refuse
To let pain become a window
To the good we can profuse.
For the Pink September Squares
Rawson Lake; photo: Jack Ng
It was their last day by the lake. The weather was perfect and the air was so crisp it squeaked. She inhaled deeply, savoring every moment. By that time tomorrow she’d be stuck in rush-hour traffic.
“See?” he pointed. “Even wood can’t keep its head above water at some point.”
She snuck a hand into his and squeezed. She wished she could give him sips of this place during what was to come. She wished she could tell him this round wouldn’t be as difficult as the ones before. That this one would work. She didn’t know if to hope or fear it being the last. It shattered her that she no longer knew what he hoped for.
She gathered the light around her, kissed his baldness, and rose to stand.
“For now, my love, let’s float.”
For What Pegman Saw: Rawson Lake Canada
Photo: Dvora Freedman
“I’ll be famous,” she said, twirling and eyeing her reflection in the mirror. She was wearing a particularly twirl-worthy skirt and a shiny pair of sandals.
“Yep, famous,” she repeated with finality. She spun a few more times then stopped mid-turn to face me. “Do you know what famous means?”
I raised an eyebrow in half-query, half-invitation. Children’s explanations are immensely more informing than anything I might attempt to guess at.
“It means everybody knows you and everybody likes you a lot.”
“It does?” I lent a slight undulation to my voice in what I hoped was just a smidge of challenge for the second part.
She’s a perceptive little one. She caught it. Paused. Frowned. Pursed her lips and pursed them again in front of the mirror to inspect the effect. “Well, everybody knows famous people,” she countered and puckered her lips a few more times to make a point. “But … maybe not everybody likes them?”
I smiled and raised my eyebrow again.
She straightened and crossed the room to lean into me. “Because some famous people can be bad?”
I wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Some. Sometimes people get famous but not for very good things.”
She nodded into my side. “Like Hitler and … you know?”
“Yes. Hitler … and some other people … are known for doing very very bad things.”
“I don’t want to be that kind of famous.”
I gave her a squeeze. “I understand. I wouldn’t worry … You are nothing like that … You have a beautiful, loving, caring heart. It’s not a bad thing to want to be famous. Most famous people aren’t bad. Most people in general aren’t bad. Famous and not famous ones.”
She leaned into me a moment longer. She knows hardship. Young as she is, the pain of cruel actions isn’t abstract to her.
I took a deep breath to remind her she was safe. She followed. Took another. Shook the pensive worry off and looked down into her magnificently twirl-worthy skirt.
“Well,” she stood and made a quick half-turn, watching the edges of the fabric lift and roil and dance and fly. “I’ll be the good kind of famous.” She walked back to the full-length mirror to reinspect her reflection. “The beautiful heart kind …”
For The Daily Post
Photo: Dvora Freedman
In places too many
On this one blue-green ball,
Children haul
More than the weight of firewood
On their backs,
Big or small.
Sorrow, loss, illness, agony
Needs unmet
Unheard calls …
Yet they are all
Our children,
Their pain is our
Shortfall.
They are worthy of better:
In the now
For the future
For humanity’s long haul.
For The Daily Post
He reached into his pocket and rummaged around. “I’ve brought something to show you,” he said, eyes searching mine. “But it’s a secret …”
“Oh?” I offered.
“Well, sort of,” he shrugged as an uncertain smile worked its way into his cheeks. “I took them to school … but I didn’t tell anyone … because we’re not allowed to … The teacher woulda’ taken them away and other kids maybe woulda’ told her or asked to see them and then she’d know …”
I hiked my eyes up and nodded my expectation.
The grin grew but it still held a sheen of sad.
He pulled his fist out of his pocket and turned it so the back of his hand rested on the table, then ceremoniously uncurled his fingers.
Four grains of rice in tiny vials, strung onto a keychain ring.
“They have names on them,” he said reverently.
I squinted and reached for a magnifying glass. Handed him one.
Our heads met over the small nest of palm and he mouthed the words, more sigh than voice. “Fee, Fi, Fo and Fum.”
A quartet recently eaten not by a giant smelling the blood of an English man but by a feline with a swishing tail who had knocked the fishbowl over and left not one golden scale behind.
For The Daily Post
Photo: Amitai Asif
It is in your grasp
To take hold
To absorb
Offered light
Life’s rewrite.
It’s within your soul
To recall
To be bold
In the hollowed out space
Of your mind
To breathe deep
To grow whole.
For The Daily Post
Photo: Atara Katz
Weave the fabric
Of your life.
Reshape
Reuse
The warp,
The woof.
Line up
Soft hues
In the
Foundation
You call
Home.
For The Daily Post
Photo: Ofir Asif
Carve beauty
Out of woe.
Hew purpose
From the rough.
Sculpt meaning
To make good enough
What wasn’t
And yet
Somehow was
All you could
Know.
Carve beauty
Out of woe.
Find you
Inside
The flow.
For The Daily Post
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