Photo by Paolo Nicolello on Unsplash
Candle lighting
The edge
Of the world
And the margins
Of time
To the endless
Flicker
Of loss.
[For Kathryn: you became light eight years ago today. We all loved you. We all love you more.]
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Endless in 18 words
She took one last look around, another in the mirror.
Waterproofs. Umbrella. Boots. A change of clothes tied around her waist. A utility apron with ration-filled pockets. Some necessaries. Her pen and notebook. Basic first aid. Matches. Tarp. The photo. And her courage, tightly wound into the center of her chest.
She was ready.
There were no roads or maps where she was going. She’d hike up then use her wits and hopefully the scent of memory, awakened, to find the place. She didn’t know how much the faded photo would help, with the quarry and the landslide and the decades passed since the plate was exposed. Still, she took it. Her soul told her that the photo did not wish to be left behind.
She walked into the dawn. She had everything she needed.
If fates smiled, she’d find the ruins of Witch Wilma’s home. Her great-great-grandma’s tomb.
For Crispina Crimson’s Creative Challenge
Photo: Niklas Priddat on Unsplash
She let the shudder travel from the roots of her hair to the nape of her neck and down her spine to the place where the calving of her body started. The skin on the small of her back awoke. She sighed.
It wasn’t the chill in the air that had her trembling, even though the breeze could explain the raised goosebumps on her skin. It was the vista that had shaken her. And the memories it sought.
Oh, this was a different place. A different time. Yet somehow these still were the same sky where a red moon rides on the humps of the low river hills spreading below it. Transporting her. The earth roiled under a tapestry of dark and starlight, of shade and voids and hidden stars. Her breath drowned in wonder and sorrow: for lost beginnings, for hopes come dawn.
Prosery Prompt: “a red moon rides on the humps of the low river hills” (Carl Sandburg’s Jazz Fantasia)
For the dVerse Prosery challenge
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
She could still hear
The sound of children.
The thunk of balls
Against the chain link fence
Where the big kids
Played.
The smell of dust
From the yard
By the old concrete
Stage.
See the tiny kiosk
Near the gate,
And the ancient seller
Who was always
There.
Feel the coolness of
The main building
As you walked in from
The bottom of the outside
Stairs.
The smell of paint
And cardboard.
The metal-legged
Chairs.
And the hopeful
Cacophony
Of children on recorders
In the music room
Elsewhere.
Oh, she knew that
The yard was empty.
No hubbub actually
Filled the evening
Air.
Still the decades tumbled
As memory bloomed,
Transporting
Now to then
With an unexpected
Flare.
So much has
Stayed
The same,
Even as so much has
Changed
In her.
For the dVerse poetry challenge
Note: This photo was taken last year in my elementary school, which I had occasion to visit one early evening after not seeing the place for decades. It was a magical, if complicated, revisiting.
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
Travel home
To where the shadow
Replicates
What your heart knows:
The lives
The parks
The bustling city
That seems so quiet
And yet flows,
Even when appearing
To hold its breath
In forced repose.
For the Tuesday Photo Challenge: Travel
Photo: Osnat Halperin-Barlev
Hold your toes
And attention
On the story she tells.
Lean in more
To inspect
Every image as well.
For no matter
The weather
Or the chatter
Outside,
There’s not much like
The keepsake
Of a big sister’s
Pride,
And the magic of
Words
In your sweet heart,
Amplified.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Keepsake in 49 words
Photo: Amitai Asif
Go deep into the space within
Where sorrow holds to joy,
And find the light that shadow
Serenades
In times
Without employ.
Go deep into the burrowed
Land
Where memory resides,
And seek the song that
Dances,
Stubborn,
In your mind.
For Linda Hill’s SoCS writing prompt: Deep
Note: Dedicated to all who are struggling during these uncertain times. May you find all that you need, in health, in life, in light.
“Do you still have it?”
“Let me see,” he nodded at the screen even though he knew she couldn’t see him.
“Okay.”
The tremor in her voice told him everything: How tender she felt, how brave she was, how she couldn’t bear for him to ask directly lest it shatter what brittle control she managed to maintain.
“Got it,” he breathed. Attached. Hit ‘send.’ “Check your email.”
The line was silent. Then her voice, full of tears. “I knew it. I knew it hadn’t been a dream. She said she’d visit. From the after. Exactly this way. … And she came.”
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
Of all scenes
And joys and sorrows,
Of all the steps
And breaths
And sense,
There is the ebb and flow
And stillness,
That makes this
Movement
My heart’s
Place.
Photo: Hadera, Israel
The bus rumbled on the narrow road, slow behind the loaded tractor wagon. A mix of diesel fumes, damp earth, and faint notes of orange blossoms wafted through the open crack in the heavy window.
They were going to be late. Again.
She sighed and glanced at her youngest sister, automatically feeling for the change-of-uniform she carried at the bottom of her school bag for the eventuality that her sister’s car-sickness would get the upper hand.
Across the narrow aisle, a woman coughed wetly into a handkerchief and shifted the plastic baskets that crowded the small space under her feet. Those will be packed full on the ride back from Hadera, their area’s shopping center and nearest ‘big’ town.
Finally, past Gan-Shmuel, the snailing tractor turned into a field and the bus picked up speed. Houses marked the city’s boundaries. She nudged her other sister awake. “We’re getting off soon.”
For What Pegman Saw: Hadera, Israel
Note: Depicting a very true (almost daily) childhood memory …
tucked away in the mountains
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