For Old Times

January 31, 2024Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Childhood Adversity, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Home, Making meaning, Micro Fiction, Overcoming, Repair 32 Comments

She’d see it on her way to school. A shell of itself.

A bit like her it was, she felt. Unprotected. Exposed to the elements.

Years later she returned to do her duty by those who birthed her. She took a walk, eager to escape the cloying empathy of people who knew exactly why she’d left. She saw it. Still a shell. But now a possibility.

“I’ll build you up,” she said. And did.

The thick walls welcomed her, insulating. The roof salvaged old beams into current protection.

A home at last. For old times sake. For new beginnings.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Photo prompt © Susan Rouchard

The Ride Home

August 16, 2023Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, adoption, Childhood Adversity, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Home, journey, Micro Fiction, Photo prompt, Revisiting 26 Comments

(Photo prompt: Brenda Cox)

She saw the red bus nearing. Her eyes stung. Must be the jet-lag and little sleep. Home seemed far. Unreal, almost.

Or was this home?

She pressed her bag against the fullness in her chest.

This question was part of what she’d come all this way to explore.

The crush of people carried her onto the vehicle. Up the staircase. To the top.

She leaned into the seat and let the sounds of a language she’d forgotten wash through her. Awakening belonging. Remembering despair.

She’d been four when her adoptive parents came.

One day she belonged here. The next, nowhere.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Peas In A Pod

July 1, 2023Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Announcement, FlashFiction, Friday Fictioneers, Home, Just for fun, Micro Fiction, Photo Fiction, Siblings, Things Kids Say 19 Comments

She stormed in and stood, panting, hands on knees.

“What is it, girl!” Penny jumped, spilling some tea. A chain of horrible scenarios tumbled through her brain.

“She’s excited, not scared,” Margo barely lifted her eyes from the book she was destroying.

Clara nodded. Still unable to speak.

“I. Found. It!” she finally managed.

“Found what?” Penny snapped, then bit down her irritation. It was tiring, being the elder. The responsible one. The level-headed, boring, taskmaster sibling.

“Our perfect future homes!” Clara announced. “We can live next to each other, strung along the avenue like peas in a pod.”

For Friday Fictioneers

Photo prompt © Dale Rogerson

Not His Kind

July 2, 2022Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Adversity, Finding peace, Flash Fiction, healing, Home, kindness, Micro-fiction, Relationships, Starting over, Weekend Writing Prompt 33 Comments

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(Photo: Daniel Diesenreither on Unsplash)

When he first saw her, he thought, no way!

After all, he preferred the quiet kind who’d let him listen to the crackle, to the silence, to the breathing of the cabin’s logs.

He thought her flippant. Voluble.

Disrespectful of tranquility. Wasting words.

But she’d been sent, and his household needed a woman.

So he endured.

Till he heard her soothe a monologue of comfort into his orphan’s ear.

And his heart turned dear.

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt of Flippant in 74 words.

Anew

March 23, 2022Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, History, Home, Memory, Micro-fiction, Nothing is Impossible, Old and New, Revisiting, Ruins 36 Comments

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She took the bus to near as possible. Then walked. A few cars honked, perhaps to offer a ride. Perhaps to get something she wasn’t offering.

She waved them off. Walked on.

It made sense to arrive by foot. As in the times before.

The times she should have no way of knowing, yet did.

Remember.

They’d tried to put her behind locked windows between soft walls when she first tried to speak of it.

She had learned not to.

But her soul knew.

And there it was. As then.

Almost.

The stone crumbling, yet still her olden home.

Anew.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Photo prompt © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

Stable Home

March 9, 2022Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Things Kids Say, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Adversity, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Home, Making do, Micro-fiction, Priorities, Seeking safety, Stable, Survival 42 Comments

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They thought it mattered to him that it wasn’t fancy. That he’d care it was damp. Or old. Or cobbled together from what materials could be found.

They were wrong.

All he ever wanted was a roof that did not leak, a hearth that could be lit, food enough to fill his belly, safety in his sleep, a bed that did not bite, walls that did not threaten to collapse about his ears.

The cabin was all that.

And more.

Sure, it had housed horses, and smelled of them, sometimes.

It only made it more a home.

A stable home.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Photo prompt © Lisa Fox

The Gall

January 8, 2022Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Adversity, Betrayal, Cruelty, Deceit, Flash Fiction, Home, Homelessness, Micro-fiction, Temerity, Weekend Writing Prompt 16 Comments

(Photo: Abigail on Unsplash)

She steamed and paced and stomped and stewed.

The temerity. The audacious liberties he’d taken.

It was one thing to sell the house.

Another, to have removed her name from the deed.

To have kept the change hidden.

Her parents’ house, no less.

The place of hers – not his – childhood.

Cruelty was why she’d left him.

But this?

He, vacationing on islands.

She and the children, homeless.

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Temerity in 69 words.

Wild Away

December 5, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Breathing Space, CCC, Childhood Adversity, connection, Finding a way, Flash Fiction, Foster Care, healing, Home, Micro-fiction, New Beginnings 12 Comments

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Margot leaned closer to examine the stake. Her smile grew.

The child should be called Gretel, with such clues.

Then again, Margot was no evil stepmom. Or at least, not evil … The two of them couldn’t help not being biologically related.

Not any more than the girl could help being wild.

The social worker believed the latter a hindrance. Understandable, perhaps, given how many placements the child had lost. The system found it inconvenient to have a lass with more wilderness than tameness, who needed space and took it. Knowing Grenadine’s history, how could they not see why she’d tolerate no leash?

“This child will run away,” the social worker had warned when Margot said she’ll have her. “You’re so rural, you’d have no help keeping her contained.”

Margot had no plan to do so.

The child was free. The sticker meant that she’d be home by dinner.

For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge

The Addition

March 15, 2021March 15, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Quotes, Reflections, Writing Tags: Creative writing, dVerse, Flash Fiction, Home, Prosery, Quote, Rescue, Second Chances, Trust, Writing Challenge, Writing prompt 22 Comments

(Photo: Simona Roubkova on Unsplash)

“What are you going to do with this thing?”

Leah shrugged, and watched as Marty circled the addition to their household, arms behind his back in what she thought of as his ‘Wannabee Inspector General.’

“It is useless,” he muttered.

“It is cute,” she said, and chuckled at the horror on his face. “In its own way, at least.”

For to be fair, the poor creature would win no beauty contests. Patchy hair, droopy eyelid, bloated abdomen. But there was a trusting glint in the blue eye, and a gentleness that sought her heart and hooked it.

“You’d do it mercy to put it down.”

“I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility that existence has its own reason for being,” Leah challenged. “If we can be of help, why not even try?”

She reached down to pet the pup. “Her name’s Pat.”

Prosery prompt: “I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility that existence has its own reason for being.” — Wisława Szymborska, “Possibilities”

For the dVerse prosery challenge

Reprieve

January 22, 2021January 22, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Good stuff!, Life and love, Meditations, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Beach, Breathing Space, Calm, CCC, Flash Fiction, Home, Micro-fiction, Oceanside, Photo prompt, Relaxation response, Replenish, Reprieve 13 Comments

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She lifted her face to the sun and felt the vibrant scents of waves and freedom fill her lungs. The whole of her relaxed as if on cue. Pre-programmed. Indelibly tuned in to the whoosh of ocean breath that she could not yet see but every cell within her remembered.

Her heart swelled and her chest rose, liberated.

The moment coursed through her in liquid satisfaction.

Surf. Ebb. Swish. Flow. Hiss. Sand-licking waves.

Another inhalation of the salty tang and behind her she could hear the sounds of other people readying to take the path from car-park to sand. A child protested. A man’s voice soothed. A door slammed. A moment later a discordant melody of feet clip-clopped onto the faded wooden slats, drumming a crescendo of expectation through her bare feet.

The beach.

A needed reprieve.

At home at last by the ocean where her soul had always lived.

For Crispina‘s Crimson’s Creative Challenge