Lady In Waiting

May 19, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Meditations, Muse and Flow, Photography, Poetry, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Adversity, Flash Fiction, Freedom, Friday Fictioneers, Hopes, Micro-fiction, Patience, Refugees, Tenacity, The Statue of Liberty 60 Comments

(Photo: Na’ama Yehuda)

If he could make it there, he’d make it anywhere.

It was the axiom he had placed everything on.

He held on to the promise when his body hurt from beatings. He played the image of it in his mind when emptiness of heart and stomach kept him from shut-eye. He whispered small encouragements to himself to drown the insults that insisted he was nothing.

For he was. Someone.

He had to believe.

The words she said.

About where he could be.

Himself.

If he lived.

So he did.

And lit beneath storm clouds, she stood, waiting.

For the day.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers (Thank you for using my photo as a prompt this week!)

Top Terrace

May 16, 2021May 16, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Funnies, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Achievement, CCC, competition, Flash Fiction, Micro-fiction, Photo prompt, Pigeons, Revenge, Siblings, Top Banana 10 Comments

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Finally, the upper nest!

Getting it was not only about ousting the head of their band. Battling persistent bumble foot, Bellow Baggins was not much of an opponent anymore. The issue was the other wannabes who jockeyed for position. Not the least of them being Peg-The-Leg, a nest brother and beak in Squeal’s side since hatching.

It took finesse, skill, and a good bit of cunning to throw the competition off the ledge. Figuratively these days, but no less satisfying. For Squeal never forgot the terror of Flight-School (or as fledglings called it, Fly-or-Die days). Peg-The-Leg had the benefit of an extra nesting day and a bigger mouth. It had taken little effort for him to shove Squeal out. Almost to his death.

No matter. Time had been kinder to the peewee. Now Peg-The-Leg was taken down a peg to nesting in the eaves, while Squeal paraded a top terrace.

For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge

Home, Sweet Home

May 13, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, City life, Everything's relative, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, friends, Making do, Micro-fiction, Opposites, Roommates 47 Comments

“There’s plenty of room,” Zoe insisted.

Easy for you to say, Dana sniffed. Zoe was five foot nothing in heels and reed thin. Dana sat on planes with knees bumping her chin.

Zoe slunk between people like an oiled spaghetti, unlatched a gate, and scampered down metal stairs.

“Wait!” Dana bumbled in her wake, apologetic. She must have stepped on five pedestrians’ toes and hit another with her bag.

The basement studio was airless, dark, and smelled of garlic and Bok choy. Dana was sure she could touch both walls with outstretched arms.

“Welcome, Roomie!” Zoe announced. “Home, sweet home!”

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Photo prompt: © Roger Bultot

Tethered To The Queen

May 10, 2021May 10, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Quotes, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Adversity, connection, dVerse, Escape, Flash Fiction, Freedom, Hunger, Micro-fiction, Moon, Prosery, Quote 34 Comments

(Photo: Andrés Gómez on Unsplash)

If only they had thought to mark their way, perhaps they wouldn’t have lost it.

Then again, the whole idea of running away was to forgo discovery. Leaving shiny pebbles would have made the whole endeavor be over well before it had began.

They trudged along. Bellies emptier than in hungry nights before.

There was a misery in a scrabbled-for freedom. And yet at least their torsos did not suffer the indignity of another whip.

Eliah’s stomach growled. He sighed. “Only mouths are we.”

“Who sings the distant heart which safely exists in the center of all things?” Lilah responded, distracting him.

The boy grinned through tired tears. He knew the correct reply. The moon of course.

He pointed at the sky.

His grandmother’s nod was filled with pride.

For one was never lost while their heart stayed tethered to the night’s reigning queen.

For the dVerse Prosery challenge

Prosery prompt: “Only mouths are we. Who sings the distant heart which safely exists in the center of all things? – from Rainer Maria Rilke, “Heartbeat.”

Not Quite

May 8, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Alone, Creative writing, Flash Fiction, Isolated, Loss, Micro-fiction, Society, Solitude, Suspend Judgment, Weekend Writing Prompt 23 Comments

(Photo: Kajetan Sumila on Unsplash)

He was, but not quite, a solitudinarian.

He lived alone. His homestead perched atop a bluff where steep trails provided an effective fencing.

He offered bare gruff care for stranded hikers whose calculations of the weather led them to beg shelter.

Townspeople cast shadows on his hermitage. No sane man, they insisted, would give up their company.

He differed.

He came down from the mountain only rarely, for provisions he could not otherwise procure, his expression ascertaining that friendship remained off that list.

And yet.

He loved. The one. Before.

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: solitudinarian in 90 words

Writing In The Sand

May 7, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Meditations, Memoriam, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: CCC, Coming Home, Creative writing, Flash Fiction, Grief, Loss, Micro-fiction, Patience, Photo prompt, Seashore, Waiting 18 Comments

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She shifted her weight and sand squeezed warm between her toes. Heated not by sun – the orb still far too distant in such early spring – but because she’s been standing still so long that the permeating chill under her soles relented to the constant pulse of lifeblood in her veins.

A bird called. Another bird returned. An insect buzzed a disharmonious song. It will be summer soon.

She felt her chest rise in a breath and her eyes skimmed the expanse of shimmering ground, patient, waiting for the tide.

Today, perhaps, he’ll come.

Today, maybe, he will return home from the wild, where waves rose high and ships dipped low to the ocean’s floor.

There was a writing in the sand. A code left by the crabs. The gulls. The seaweed.

She waited. Wavelets licked her feet.

Perhaps today something of him will wash ashore.

For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge

Make The Move

May 5, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Micro-fiction, Moving house, New Beginnings, Oops, Problem Solving, Realizations, Relationships 43 Comments

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Rupert had always taken things too literally.

Now she would be stuck with the same leak around the toilet bowl when the boys flush a bit too long; with the same creaky closet door that slithers nightmares in her dreams when Mat-The-Cat decides to make a bed of laundered linen; and with the crooked shelf in the pantry that requires a perfected fold of cardboard to ensure the flour box does not slide off.

It never was the outside scenery she needed changing.

She watched one half roll by and realized she did not care to wait for the other.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Photo prompt © Ted Strutz

The Seeing

April 30, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: belief, CCC, Creativity, Death, Family, Flash Fiction, grandparents, Life Lessons, Micro-fiction, Visitor 27 Comments

“When I die,” she’d say, “I will not be truly away from you.”

Both sides of the statement used to worry him when he was little.

“Will I see you?” He once fretted. It was the day they had buried the pup who did not last the night. The runt who never whined and did not wriggle by the time the sun awoke. They’d laid the tiny bundle under a small mound of dirt in the yard. And it was lost to sight.

“In a manner of speaking,” Grandma had replied, untroubled. “For not all seeing is done with eyes.”

He did not understand her then.

Or when she died.

He wasn’t sure he understood her still, with many years passed.

Her absence a hole in his heart.

Then he came across the giant burl.

And he felt her in it. Waiting. Smiling. Seen.

He carved her out.

For Crispina‘s Crimson’s Creative Challenge

Best Of All

April 28, 2021April 28, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Reflections, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Best friend, connection, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Making the most of it, Micro-fiction, Photo prompt, Poetry, Relationships, Reunion 51 Comments

It rained. It hailed. It stormed. It flooded.

It none of it mattered.

They laughed. They sang. They danced. They huddled.

They had a chance to reconnect.

In all the ways that mattered, and in some they hadn’t quite dared hope for, yet came true.

Oh, they were cold. And after a time, hungry.

But still the stories flowed. The tears, sometimes. The laughter. Oh, the laughter!

Best of all, the others who would otherwise pass by,

Who would pass judgment,

Did not.

Because the weather

Protective in its dreary wetness

Let them be.

Let them love.

Made it perfect.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Initiation

April 25, 2021April 25, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Meditations, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Accolyte, CCC, Creative writing, Flash Fiction, Intiation, Mentor, Micro-fiction, New Beginnings, Photo prompt, Rite of passage, Writing Challenge 18 Comments

“Close your eyes. Feel the levers of the earth move with you,” Moria deposited the words like diamonds lined on velvet cloth.

Lianne obeyed the first. Tried hard for the second. But all she felt were the tremors in her body, bare skin shuddering against penetrating morning chill. And the fear.

“Breathe in the cold, breathe out the worry.” The old woman’s voice affected little compassion, yet there was no shaming in it. Just instruction.

Lianne tried, but her shaking only intensified. Perhaps I am not ready, she fretted.

“You are ready,” Moria stated.

Lianne gasped. Could her mentor read her mind?

“No, but I’ve seen enough initiates.”

The elder’s chuckle, puncturing the solemn task, somehow eased Lianne’s mind. Her body calmed. Her eyes relaxed behind the wrap. Her toes curled around the softness of the mossy ground. The bottom step offered a damp welcome.

“Better. Now climb.”

For Crispina‘s Crimson’s Creative Challenge