I Am NOT!

February 12, 2022Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Funnies, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Writing Tags: Capricious, Contrary, Decisions, Just because, Micro Fiction, Opinions, Poetry, Rhyme, Self-acceptance, Weekend Writing Prompt 23 Comments

(Photo: Jordan Ladikos on Unsplash)

I am NOT,

She insisted,

Capricious

Or blind.

I am bold.

I am loud.

I am the life of

The crowd.

I speak up.

I won’t hush.

My decisions

May clash.

My opinions indeed

Tend to

Unwind,

And it’s true that

I’m good at

Changing

My mind.

But I am not,

(At this moment)

Arbitrarily

Inclined.

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: capricious in 55 words

Limbo

April 2, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Adversity, being yourself, Breathing Space, CCC, Contentment, Flash Fiction, Growth, Micro-fiction, Overgrowth, Photo prompt, Self-acceptance 10 Comments

(Photo: Crispina Kemp)

He leaned back and sighed in contentment.

It was never a simple thing, to find comfort.

He sighed again. Just for the pleasure of it.

A bird chirped over his head, and he lifted his chin to greet it.

“You got it, Feathered Friend,” he smiled.

Birds understood the impossibility of confinement. How one needed room. To fly. To move. To preen. To be. To keep balance.

It was not a simple thing, to find space for one’s wingspan.

Especially not for his.

“Daddy Long Legs,” people had called him, and not with kindness. “Spindly Spider Man.”

He couldn’t help his lanky limbs, how his pituitary did something that made his long bones longer and lacked a way to let them know he was past growing age.

How long? He didn’t know.

Limbo sighed, stretched his legs, and rested his feet on the stump.

One day at a time.

For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge

His Destiny

April 11, 2020April 11, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: being yourself, Creative writing, Destiny, Flash Fiction, Micro-fiction, Nomad, Outside the box, Roam, Self-acceptance, Weekend Writing Prompt, Writing Challenge 14 Comments

Photo: Adi Yusuf on Unsplash

“It is my destiny,” he insisted.

“It is laziness,” they countered.

He shrugged and hoisted his belongings.

They wrung their hands and shook their heads and offered dire endings. Yet there was little they could do, short of straitjacketing. And they’d been down that road with others years ago and found it sorely lacking.

Settling down suffocated him. He was Nomad born. He could heed only that calling.

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Nomad in 68 words

Your Wild Side

January 27, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Reflections, Writing Tags: Creative writing, Discovery, dVerse, Home, Inner Peace, Poetry, Poetry prompt, Quadrille, Self-acceptance, Self-awareness, spirit, Wild 32 Comments

Photo: S.L.

Let your wild side find the quiet corners

Where life’s merit leads you home.

Let the untamed within you carry favor

With bits knapped off of

Your lost soul.

Know the places that sustain,

The nooks where spirit laughs.

You’re at peace

At last.

For the dVerse quadrille challenge: wild

Couch Karma

August 30, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Photography, Reflections, Writing Tags: Central Park, Consequences, Couch, Getting older, Kids, Life Lessons, Paying the Piper, Photography, Self-acceptance, SoCS, Toddlers, Writing prompt 36 Comments

Photo: Na’ama Yehuda

It will be the couch for me today, after a bit more lifting, hopping, sliding, climbing, carrying, skipping, and bending, than my sort-of-hanging-in-there spine is happy with.

Not that I regret any of the evasive maneuvers to ‘prevent’ a giggling toddler from stepping on my shadow … Not that I regret going down the slide (well, a little … going down wasn’t the issue, getting back up was … I swear they put these toddler-level things lower and lower to the ground … ;)). Not that I regret counting ducks and spotting turtles, tracking helicopters in the sky, crouching to fix sandals and greet puppies, or examining mini-melted-puddles on park-paths of what might’ve been a dropped ice-cream (the alternative is gnarlier…). I don’t even regret riding hippos “to Israel and also to the Zoo” (yep, New York’s got a whole bloat of tolerant Hippos in the Safari Playground — and no offense to the hippopotami for the term — I don’t make English, I just use is …).

T’was all of it a lot of fun, it was. Delightful as every time spent with this knee-high to a grasshopper of a peanut is. Love that gal to the moon and Mars and back (whether we get there on or off the back of a hippo calf). But this does not mean there’s no piper to pay.

So, I’m paying the piper today. (Hopefully only today …)

And it’ll be slow transitions on and off the couch and bed and chair. And some Ibuprofen, and Biofreeze and Arnica salve, and the duck-wobble molasses-like moving that is the package deal in a body a bit too willowy and quite a bit too finicky than its inhabitant likes to accept, but perhaps should.

Or won’t.

Because.

Life’s too short and couches got to earn their keep somehow.

For Linda Hills SoCS prompt: Couch

Kind of Famous

May 27, 2018Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Professional Development, Reflections, Speech Language Pathology, Things Kids Say, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Childhood trauma, Disabilities, healing, hope, Postaday, Self-acceptance, speech therapy, The Daily Post, Things Kids Say 2 Comments

Photo: Dvora Freedman

“I’ll be famous,” she said, twirling and eyeing her reflection in the mirror. She was wearing a particularly twirl-worthy skirt and a shiny pair of sandals.

“Yep, famous,” she repeated with finality. She spun a few more times then stopped mid-turn to face me. “Do you know what famous means?”

I raised an eyebrow in half-query, half-invitation. Children’s explanations are immensely more informing than anything I might attempt to guess at.

“It means everybody knows you and everybody likes you a lot.”

“It does?” I lent a slight undulation to my voice in what I hoped was just a smidge of challenge for the second part.

She’s a perceptive little one. She caught it. Paused. Frowned. Pursed her lips and pursed them again in front of the mirror to inspect the effect. “Well, everybody knows famous people,” she countered and puckered her lips a few more times to make a point. “But … maybe not everybody likes them?”

I smiled and raised my eyebrow again.

She straightened and crossed the room to lean into me. “Because some famous people can be bad?”

I wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Some. Sometimes people get famous but not for very good things.”

She nodded into my side. “Like Hitler and … you know?”

“Yes. Hitler … and some other people … are known for doing very very bad things.”

“I don’t want to be that kind of famous.”

I gave her a squeeze. “I understand. I wouldn’t worry … You are nothing like that … You have a beautiful, loving, caring heart. It’s not a bad thing to want to be famous. Most famous people aren’t bad. Most people in general aren’t bad. Famous and not famous ones.”

She leaned into me a moment longer. She knows hardship. Young as she is, the pain of cruel actions isn’t abstract to her.

I took a deep breath to remind her she was safe. She followed. Took another. Shook the pensive worry off and looked down into her magnificently twirl-worthy skirt.

“Well,” she stood and made a quick half-turn, watching the edges of the fabric lift and roil and dance and fly. “I’ll be the good kind of famous.” She walked back to the full-length mirror to reinspect her reflection. “The beautiful heart kind …”

For The Daily Post