(Photo: Angiola Harry on Unsplash)
It did not matter that
The evidence was there for all
To see.
The crumbs.
The chocolate stains.
The broken shards of Nana’s cookie
Jar with
That crack from when Pawpaw drank
Too much and thought he was a
Knife thrower
But missed
The block.
It didn’t matter she was
Caught.
The child was
Unrepentant.
“Cookies are for eatin’, Nana.
No good letting them go stale
In that
Pot!”
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt of: Unrepentant in 69 words
“So I sit here…”
“…and wait,” Misha confirmed.
Clara sighed. When she agreed to babysit her nephew, she thought playgrounds and picnics. Not nonstop rain and hours in a gloomy cafe while her car was being repaired.
She looked around for the boy. Yep. There. His red top. He’s crouched behind the same table. Every. Single. Time.
“I give up!” she announced.
“Ta-da!” Misha popped out like a cork from a bottle.
The four-year-old ran to her and wrapped his arms around her torso. “Best play-date ever, Auntie Clawa! I love this Waiting Game!”
Clara smiled. “Wanna hide again?”
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
Photo prompt © David Stewart
(photo: Na’ama Yehuda)
The tallest flowers caught her eye, but it was the withered daffodils that caught her breath and pressed a fist into her heart.
His favorites.
The stalwart sentinels of spring.
Outnumbered now. Outshone. Outdone.
As was he.
After utterly too short a time.
Her throat constricted. A reflex of holding what she’d learned would be a solitary cry.
“Look, Mama!” a child trilled. “The daffodils are tired!”
“Yes, darling,” a woman’s voice returned. “They did excellent work and are resting now, sleeping till next spring.”
Tears slid. It was something he’d say.
She should have known he’d send a messenger.
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers.
Thank you, Rochelle, for using my photo for the prompt this week. And, for all who manage loss, especially of those taken too young in all manners of war – may you know that we remember, and we listen, and we will not forget.
“I am not cold!”
“Your lips are blue,” the mother deadpanned.
“They’re not!” the child insisted, her exclaim dampened by chattering teeth.
“I see,” the woman breathed and swallowed a retort. The girl was altogether too much like herself and would only dig in deeper if confronted.
One set of eyes stared at the other.
The shuddering intensified.
“There’s a nice warm bath and dinner waiting inside,” the mom dangled.
A shrug.
“And how long do you intend to be … um … ‘not cold’?”
The little girl narrowed her eyes.
“Very well. Shall I bring you a chair, then?”
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
Photo: © Dale Rogerson
(Photo: Mabel Amber on Pixabay)
There was a moment between
Childhood and
Being almost
Grown up,
Where she knew that she would
Very soon be
Quite possibly
All tied up.
With chores and duties
Work and house,
Strung like eyes
On knitting needles,
In a knot of adult
Life.
For the dVerse quadrille challenge: Knot
“What is this place?”
“An outhouse?” Marti sniffed, perhaps for clues.
Barbara wrinkled her nose. Marti always did have a potty brain. “It would not make sense without a door, now, would it?”
“Ventilation?” Marti doubled down. “And anyway, a door could be removed.”
“No hole in the ground,” Barbara pointed out.
“Could have been filled in or covered.”
Barbara shook her head. Even covered in leaves and mud, the floor of the small structure looked too evenly tiled for that.
“So, if you such a genius,” Marti sneered at his know-it-all cousin, “what do you think it is?”
Barbara inspected the arched entrance, the partially enclosed back wall, the proximity to the ancient manor’s fence. A guard post, she thought, but did not say. There would be no fun in that.
“A portal to Avalon,” she stated loftily.
“Ah,” Marti retorted. “As I said, it is an outhouse, then.”
For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge
Photo: Thais Ribeiro on Unsplash
“Mama, he’s touching me!”
She tightened her grip on the steering wheel.
“Mama, he’s breathing on me!”
She inhaled.
“How come he always gets the window?”
She sighed.
“I don’t have room!”
She braked.
“Stop this or you can all walk home!”
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Jostle in 42 words
Photo: Izabelle Acheson on Unsplash
She will not elucidate.
She won’t expound.
She won’t make plain.
There is, in her view, absolutely
Nothing she needs to
Explain.
There is the plate.
There are the cookies.
There was her mouth to entertain.
So, what does any of that
Have to do with dinner
Or with waiting for dessert
Again?
Photo prompt: Todd Foltz
“Are you sure it will work?”
Tim’s chin bobbed up and down enthusiastically.
A bit too enthusiastically. It looked suspiciously like an I’m-clueless-but-want-to-pretend-I’m-not kind of nod.
Benny frowned. He had a bad feeling about the whole plan. “I still think we should have brought a proper pan.”
“Nah,” Tim waved his hand and pointed to the ball of molten orange glaring at them from the horizon. The light shimmered. “They said it was going to be hot enough to fry eggs.”
“In the carton? Don’t you need to crack them first?”
Tim shrugged. “We can always make hard boiled ones.”
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
“You’ll stand on one side of the bridge, and I’ll cross it to the other.”
Millie considered.
Sylvia could be tricky. Sometimes the spunky neighbor was a delightful friend. Other times … not so much. And that’s not counting mishaps. Millie lost tally of how many times her playmate had landed her in trouble.
Millie’s hand rose to absentmindedly rub her backside. It still sported a bruise from the last ‘adventure’ Sylvia took them on. That tree limb would never grow again, and Millie’s piggy bank was half-emptied from the fine her parents had levied.
She looked at the pond. The water lilies floated serenely on the surface. A dragonfly hovered before dipping elegantly to paint a ripple. A frog leaped and splashed and swam underneath a wide green leaf. A bird chirped nearby.
It was perfect.
“I’m fine just relaxing here on the bank,” Millie decided.
“We won’t disturb anything,” Sylvia countered, flinging a braid behind a shoulder.
Millie shuddered. It was one of the things that were uncanny about Sylvia. Millie was positive the girl could read minds.
“I brought a ball,” Sylvia enticed. “And bread.”
The ball must be Denny’s, Sylvia’s brother, and almost certainly swiped without permission. The bread? Well, that was probably not ill got.
“No ball,” Millie said, then sighed. Somehow she always gave in to what became a kind of bargaining, when she in fact wanted none of the options to begin with.
“Great!” Sylvia scampered across the narrow bridge. “I’ll toss bread crumbs in the water and make some waves. You corral. Let’s see how many frogs we can get!”
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