(Photo: Inbar Asif)
As she rose out of
Her previous life’s bramble,
She knew there was going to be
The opportunity
To gamble.
With the way her life
Could turn.
With costs and possible
Return.
On what she’d have to do
Again.
And yet, there was, she hoped,
So much
To gain.
So when once more her choice of cards fell
In a shamble,
She laughed because it was
Just a preamble,
To craft herself a new
Ensemble.
Written just for fun, for Linda’s SoCS prompt of “amble”
“So how exactly will this work?” Maria scanned the detritus left by the fire. Remains of a lifetime of work and investment. Gone. Shards and a handful of charred pots. Is all.
“We start from seed, as it were,” Steve pressed. “We get Dad’s old truck out of the garage. Use it as a wheeled nursery.”
Maria sighed. It could work, but was she even up to it? Where there’s a will there’s a way, Nana had always said, and it matters most where there’s little will with which to find a way.
“A willed nursery…” Maria nodded. “Nana’s way!”
Photo by: © Jan Wayne Fields
(Photo: Lucas Myers on Unsplash)
There was little in their heart
But ice
And calculated cruelty.
A wanton abuse of
Power.
Ribald actions of
A misery intended
To inflict.
The wreck they left
Of any who had
Crossed them,
Threatened to hollow
Even the hardiest
Protest.
And yet,
There were still some
Whose souls
Would not give in
To ugly.
Whose light
Resisted.
Insisted.
Persisted.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: wanton in 60 words
(Photo: Cameron Stow on Unsplash)
They said she was wanton.
That from a child she’s been, capricious.
Her mom would sigh. Her father, frown.
They loathed how she refused to bow.
Ungovernable. Resisting.
She was, to them,
A moral stain.
A failure
In contrition.
They had stopped speaking to her
Till she had learned submission.
The wayward daughter of the tribe.
The one who lost
Her compass.
Only they none of them knew
That,
In shunned space,
She finally
Found
Life scrumptious.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: wayward in 77 words
(Photo: Jon Tyson on Unsplash)
She lay in bed and let the day’s words wash over her.
A soft stream in the mayhem.
“You’re a tenacious child,” her teacher said, eyes smiling. “You’ve tried and tried and made this grade your own. Not everyone would have continued, but you did. I am so proud.”
Tenacious, she mouthed into the dark and tuned off shouts and thuds and cries. So proud, she curled into the glow of newfound understanding.
For Sammi‘s Weekend Writing Prompt: Tenacious in 73 words
They’d fortified the ceiling.
So they said.
The old structure needed periodical reinforcing.
So they said.
The thickness of the walls supported their claims. The deeply recessed windows. The heavy coats of paint on ancient plaster.
‘Twas all a ruse. Of course.
The false ceiling hid a warren of crawl-spaces and narrow hiding places. A stream of escaped slaves was followed by a flood of those fleeing Nazi persecution and thereafter a steady trickle of modern-day refugees.
The ceiling hid them all. Young and old. Broken and defiant. Desperate and bewildered. Men and women and the all-too-heartbreaking child.
Some stayed a night. Others for longer sheltering. Hilda had stayed the longest. A girl on arrival, she was almost a woman at war’s end. She emerged educated. In silence. In stealth. In compassion.
She became the guardian of those who followed.
Fortified with hope of one day needing it no more.
For the Crimson’s Creative Challenge
Note: Dedicated to all the heroes who — often at tremendous risk to themselves — had managed to shelter the needy, the desperate, the voiceless, and the vulnerable during times of injustice, persecution, violence, horror, and hate. To all who do so still. May we one day need to do so no more.
Photo: Ofir Asif
The strength of stone
Allows the rounding of its
Edges by time
And rain.
It lets the earth
Scour its base
As flood-paths swirl
And drain,
Even as it lets itself
Maintain
A firm place
To lean
One’s burden on,
Again.
Note: My nephew took this photo in Ethiopia, and I am humbled and moved by the beauty of it, and the eons it carries and the beginnings – and middles, and ends – of so many things it had seen.
For the Tuesday Photo Challenge: Stone
Mom always told him to put his best foot forward.
So he did.
He pulled it off and placed it in front of his wheelchair. It was the shorter prosthesis, the one that didn’t need straps around the hip to secure and the one he could even put a bit of weight on. Well, on good days, at least.
A sigh climbed in his chest, but he shook it off, took a deep breath, arranged the cardboard sign, and began:
“Oh say, can you see?…”
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers Challenge
Photo: Inbar Asif
In the deep chill of winter
It got caught en route
To a squirreled away
Acorn nuts loot.
Dedicated with love to my Southern Hemisphere friends, on this solstice day.
For Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge
How does one count miracles?
All kinds of ways.
The last day had several, some in quite unexpected places.
This is how it went:
An unattended backpack led to a delay in a race where thousands prepared to run. The delay resulted in a bomb that was intended to explode during the race, blowing up in glorious isolation and hurting no one. No one. It also exploded only partially. This bomb was RELUCTANT to hurt anyone, me think.
Another bomb did explode, this time on a busy street that very night: a beautiful Saturday night in NYC, many people out and about. While 29 people were hurt, and undoubtedly many got frightened, there was only one significant injury, and all the wounded have already been discharged from the hospital the very morning after.
Windows shattered by the powerful bomb, stuff flew about, a steel dumpster got bent out of shape … but no serious structural damage to buildings or subways or thoroughfares took place.
The bomb had been left next to an institute for the visually impaired. More people could’ve gotten hurt by the bomb, tripped by not being able to see the debris. But the place was closed for the weekend.
The response of NYPD and FDNY was swift and remarkably efficient. All hands on deck in coordinated help. Knowledge that grew out of years of terror attacks against Israelis, saves lives now: The first responders knew to search for additional bombs. Indeed, a secondary device was found, unexploded, and was removed safely by the brave bomb squad without harm to anyone. Another RELUCTANT bomb, me think. Didn’t want to participate in any premeditated carnage, this one.
So, you see, the person or persons who’d left these items of ugly destruction–whatever the dark soulless ‘reasoning’ they might’ve made themselves believe justified it–meant to sow terror, to spread pain, to create panic.
They wanted devastation.
Instead, we got several miracles.
May all evil minds be foiled.
Amen.
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