Making meaning

For Old Times

Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , 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 Critic

Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 10 Comments
silhouette of a man in window

Photo by D. Tong on Pexels.com

 

It was his job to be the critic.

He’d taken it on when he was but a child and there was naught by chaos all around him.

Criticizing was a way to put some order into madness, to have at least the illusion of control.

Not that he’d criticize them openly and risk the switch or belt or backhand or the things that were … well … worse.

But criticize he did.

Mostly himself.

At first as practice.

Then as habit.

Then as something he would do without even a pause to think.

Offer a knifing critic.

Of his actions. Of his wishes. Of his hopes. His thoughts. His dreams.

What had began as coping, turned a prison.

And the jailer was inside him.

The sentencing, his own.

 

 

 

For the SoCS Saturday Challenge: Critic(al)