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

Red Moon Riding

July 20, 2020July 20, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Meditations, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Carl Sandburg, Creative writing, dVerse, Flash Fiction, Jazz Fantasia, Longing, Memory, Micro-fiction, Night sky, Prosery, Quote, Relationships, Vista 21 Comments

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

His Shadow

May 11, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Memoriam, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Flash Fiction, Guilt, Maya Angelou, Moral injury, Poetry, Posttraumatic Stress, Prosery, PTSD, Quote, Seeking help, Trauma, Veterans, War 30 Comments

Photo: Andy Falconer on Unsplash

They want to add more activity to his day. More interests. Better engagements. A hobby. A new skill.

They don’t understand.

He is fine during the days. It is the night that haunts him. Not the dark, but the solitude. The walls closing. The suffocating silence where his breath fills all the space till there is no air left. No room for words.

Then there’s the fatigue and how it erodes all his resistance. Lets the blackness in.

They offered medicine. Said it will help him fall asleep and stay asleep.

It did.

And it made it worse.

Now his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream and he cannot find the door to waking.

He feels mummified. Lost in the abyss of thoughts and memory.

The bombs. The mines. The child.

He couldn’t save him.

Guilt swallows all.

How could there be a dawn?

Note: Dedicated to all whose deepest wounds are unseen. May you find your dawn.

For the dVerse prosery challenge: maya angelou

The quote prompt: “his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream” from “Caged Bird” by Maya Angelou

According To Plan

April 13, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Creative writing, dVerse, Escape, Flash Fiction, Getting Away, hope, Micro-fiction, Planning, Prosery, Quote, Working together, Writing prompt 54 Comments

Photo: Jon Sailer on Unsplash

So far all went according to plan.

Part serendipity, part preparation, part desperation. Sheer stubborn, too. She needed all of it.

She slunk around the building, her heartbeat almost drowning out the hum of voices reverberating in the air. She used to find the monotone of prayers soothing. Now it was the buzz of wasps.

Thomas had promised to keep any from straying. Promises were at most hopes in the Commune, but indeed the path seemed clear. Where normally there would be at least one man leaning against the door in fake calm that nonetheless effectively barred the exit, there was naught but empty space. The guards imbibed.

She quickened her pace. She’d have to time it perfectly. The once-daily pass-by train was her only chance at freedom. The rails shook. No one left and no on came on the bare platform. She leaped.

Prosery prompt quote: “No one left and no one came on the bare platform.” Edward Thomas

For the dVerse Prosery challenge: Edward Thomas