Memory Lane

December 4, 2023Na'ama Yehuda Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Adversity, Childhood trauma, dVerse, Flash Fiction, Memory Lane, Micro Fiction, Overcoming, Prosery, winter 16 Comments

(Photo: Juho S on Unsplash)

She had promised herself to never revisit those times. The best forgotten ones. And yet there she was, a small child in her lap, embers glowing in the hearth, the dog worrying a burnt crust, and her mind meandering down memory lane.

“I was where I am when the snow began,” she started.

The child shifted a knobby knee into a rib, and a cold replaced the sweet weight in her lap. Stolen coals, they were then. Collected under pain worse than whipping if she was discovered yet at the risk of frostbite and no dinner if she did not. She’d secreted an apron-full before the snow began, coating the path, incriminating every footprint.

For the payment, she bore scars.

“I was where I am,” she pushed an unneeded log into the fire. Just because. “Yet now the snow scares me none.”

For dVerse Prosery challenge

Prosery prompt: “I was where I am
When the snow began”

From “The Dead of Winter” by Samuel Menashe. Full poem here.

The Shucker

July 19, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Things Kids Say, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Abuse, Child labor, Childhood Adversity, dissociation, dVerse, Exploitation, Hine Lewis Wickes, History, Prosery, Quote, Survival 35 Comments

A girl’s voice protested. A cackle followed.

Leah kept her head down and her eyes on the task before her. There was a quota to complete if she wanted anything in her stomach, and she could make her body dead to wandering fingers. She’d learned how. The hard way. The only way.

When the foreman finally moved on, she gritted her teeth and tried to not compare slime to slime.

Not that she would ever touch the stuff. And not only because it was forbidden.

Beside her, Mandy sniffled. “How can you stand it?”

“Perhaps she doesn’t mind him,” Becca hissed. “Seeing how she never cries.”

Leah clenched her teeth, locked her knees, and steadied her breath. She focused on the fading light glinting on the blade. “No, I do not weep at the world – I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.”

For the dVerse Prosery writing prompt

Prosery prompt quote: “No, I do not weep at the world – I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.” (Zora Neale Hurston, from “How Does it Feel to be Colored Me” in World Tomorrow, 1928)

Photo: Hine Lewis Wickes, The Library Of Congress https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/nclc.00919/

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.”

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

Long To Fade

February 15, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: children, Creative writing, dVerse, Flash Fiction, Harsh, Hazelnuts, Micro-fiction, parenting, Prosery, Punishment, Quote, Yeats 24 Comments

(Image: Alicja_ from Pixabay)

“Where have you been?!” her mother’s elbows speared the air like wings on a falcon, keen to dive.

The lass lowered her head and hiked her apron in an offering. The contents would not account for hours wiled away from chores, but they might reduce the heat of what promised to be imminent suffering.

“I went out to the hazel wood, because a fire was in my head,” the child demurred, unpinning one side of the apron to reveal a mound of early hazelnuts, “in eagerness to bring your favorite, Mother. Seeing how the morrow is your saint’s day.”

The woman’s scowl budged none. “A flatterer as well as an idle hand. I know a hasty crop when I see it. Now, as you are so eager, fetch a switch of hazel and I’ll give your hide a fire that will not soon fade.”

For the dVerse prosery challenge

Poetry prompt from W. B. Yeats

The Present

December 7, 2020December 8, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Memoriam, Muse and Flow, Quotes, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Coincidence, dVerse, Flash Fiction, History, Memory, Micro-fiction, Prosery, Quote, Remembering, Revisiting, Writing prompt, WWII 13 Comments

(Photo: Adam Nieścioruk on Unsplash)

She was shaking when I entered the room. Hands wringing, lips trembling, her eyes a shade of numb I had rarely seen.

Mary had called me. She had come to check on her and bring a midday repast. Mother being too proud to ask for help, even though her legs no longer held her sturdily or long enough to cook herself a decent meal.

Appearance and stoicism were Mother’s barometers of standing.

Socially and otherwise.

Not that you’d know it from her mascaraed cheeks.

She pointed to the antique book I had gifted her the previous evening.

“I understand, therefore I’ll live,” was scribbled in the cover. “R.B. 1941“

Mother pressed a notepad on me. Scribbled on it were the same words. Same letters. An older hand.

“I forgot,” she whispered, caressing her initials. “But reading what I have just written, I now believe.”

Prompt quote: “Reading what I have just written, I now believe.” (Afterward by Louise Gluck)

For the dVerse prosery challenge

Whistling Into Wind

November 9, 2020November 9, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Quotes, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Childhood Adversity, Coming to terms, dVerse, Flash Fiction, Memory, Micro-fiction, Moving on, Prosery, Quote, Revisiting, Untold Stories 19 Comments

(Photo: Janko Ferlič on Unsplash)

She had vowed to not come back. Ever. Not to live. For sure not that.

It did not mean she would not try to visit. Or to glimpse. To set out in a morning’s determination only to curl around via rambling roads and pause at every bridge and barn until it got too late to see a thing or she lost nerve and drove home steeped in a tired mix of relief and disappointment.

“I’ll come with you,” Elmira finally said. She placed a warm hand on the base of Anastasia’s neck, hoping to soften the tension it held whenever memories threatened flood.

Anastasia shook her head. “There is nothing behind the wall except a space where the wind whistles.”

“And yet,” Elmira kneaded gently, “the Orphanage’s whistles still tell stories. Perhaps the likes of which your soul insists ought to be heard.”

Prosery prompt: “there is nothing behind the wall except a space where the wind whistles” from “Drawings By Children” by Lisel Mueller

For the dVerse prosery challenge

A Matter Of Scope

October 12, 2020October 12, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Quotes, Reflections, Writing Tags: Arts and Crafts, Botany, Creative writing, dVerse, Flash Fiction, Historical fiction, Making it work, Micro-fiction, Prosery, Quote, Relationships 35 Comments

(Photo: Anna Sullivan on Unsplash)

“It was never a matter of reach, but of scope,” Morris mouthed the words around his pipe.

Ethel harrumphed under her breath, but gently. She had to take care to not move the petals or she would have to restart the lot, and there was nothing she disliked more than having to redo tediousness. Be it in business or in marriage.

“Cannot see what you find in him,” her mother had criticized her daughter’s choice of man.

“Perhaps we look at him through the wrong end of the long telescope of Time,” her father had chuckled in knifing disapproval.

“Too long a telescope it must be,” her mother had deadpanned.

Her parents were both gone now. To the shorter end of cholera. Left Ethel and Morris the house. And a failing botany business which they were slowly but assuredly pressing into sought after art.

Prosery quote: ‘We look at him through the wrong end of the long telescope of Time’ (Hummingbird, D.H. Lawrence)

For the dVerse prosery challenge

Night Camp

September 14, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Meditations, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Reflections, Writing Tags: Caravan, Contentment, Creative writing, Desert, dVerse, Evening, Flash Fiction, Meditation, Micro-fiction, Moon, Night sky, Prosery 29 Comments

During the days there was glare and heat and baking sand and the parched tongue hoping for good water.

But at night, when they made camp, and the chill spooled at their feet and the camels chewed their cud and the humans picked the last crumbs of quick bread off their lap and the blankets were unrolled and small sounds of conversation carried on the breeze; there was ease, and sweetened tea, and the slowing beats of hearts ready for sleep.

And the sky, a dome of diamonds, flowing over them, the old and young and man and beast, as in their dreams they sleep with the moon and swim in the waters soon to ripple under the sun to the east.

Prosery prompt: “In their dreams they sleep with the moon.”–From Mary Oliver, “Death at Wind River”

For dVerse Prosery challenge

Their Bag End

August 17, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Meditations, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Reflections, Writing Tags: Creative writing, dVerse, End, Fate, Flash Fiction, life-path, Micro-fiction, Poetry prompt, Prosery, The Hobbit, time, Writing Challenge 29 Comments

Photo: Tyler Lastovich on Unsplash

They never did make it back from their destination. Not for lack of trying. Not for lack of plans. Not even for lack of courage or stamina or all the things that make a journey circular. There and back again. Like Bilbo Baggins looking for an adventure and finding more than he had bargained for (or perhaps precisely what he needed); they, too, found more along the way than they had intended.

The path slowed everything. Time turned to stone.

And when it was over, said and done, it was a time and there was never enough of it.

They took too long.

So much that life passed by before it could lead them back to where they had come from.

Perhaps where they ended was precisely where they needed to go.

Only that unlike Bilbo, they did not return to their Bag End.

(Prompt: from “A Time” by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke)

For the dVerse Prosery Challenge: A Time