Photo: Chagit Moriah-Gibor
Come on Sis
Let us peek
Through the slats
On this bridge
At the world
That flows through
Underneath
Me and you.
Pink Duo
Things Kids Say
Questions of Color
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
What will be
Of the day,
He so wanted
To say,
If you suddenly
Drain
All the color away?
Will the birds’ calls
Remain?
Will leaves still
With wind sway?
Will it be
As before
Or fade wholly
To gray?
For Cee’s Black & White Challenge: Trees
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Big Brother
Photo: Smadar Halperin-Epshtein
I will go, Big Brother
To the end of the earth
After you.
In spite of fear
I will try to repeat
All you do.
But I’ll still
Just in case
Reach for
And draw courage
From you.
For the Wits End Challenge: Childhood
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Cookie Crumble
Photo by Cook Eat on Pexels.com
It is the cookie that she wants
No teddy bear, no owl, no bunny.
It is the cookie that she holds
In hand, not in her tummy.
She takes it with her to the park
She holds it all through bedtime story.
She’d bring it right into the bath
To her it’s mandatory.
Her mother sighs
Because she knows:
It is the cookie that will crumble
All over blanket, sheets, and pillow.
The cookie that she’ll have to pry the last remains of
From her child’s hand tomorrow.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt
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Park Pretty
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
“Pink tree!” she delighted
Toddled quickly, pulled my hand
“Park pretty!” she exclaimed
“Come fast! Come fast!”
“Take picture?” she requested
And of course, I obliged.
For the Sunday Stills Photo Challenge
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Pack a Treat!
Photo: Osnat Halperin-Barlev
Come on Daddy, let’s pack
Some more rocks on your back
This way you will discover
All the treats I uncover
Also bugs and some leaves
Gifts for Mommy to retrieve.
For Tuesday’s Photo Challenge: Treat
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Cookie Share
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
“Now it’s my turn to ask you a question,” she said. “And you have to answer.”
“Fair enough,” I smiled. After all, I’d just subjected this child to a long list of questions to which she had to respond.
“What if,” she began, twinkle-eyed, “you had only one cookie, but you needed to share it with fifty kids?”
“Hmm …” I pondered. “That’s a tough one. One cookie only?”
“Yep!” She raised her eyebrows in satisfaction at what had to be my stupefied expression.
“Can I hand out something else instead?” I bargained.
“Nope. One cookie, fifty kids.” The eight-year-old was utterly too pleased with herself.
I smelled a rat but I wasn’t going to show it. She’d earned this after soldiering on through the difficult portions of the testing battery. “I give up.” I raised my hands in surrender. “I don’t see how I can split one cookie between fifty kids.”
“I never said how big the cookie had to be, did I?” she chortled. “If you have a gigantic humongous cookie it would be easy peasy to have everyone share it!”
For Cee’s Share Your World June-18-2018
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Kind of Famous
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
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The Crank
Photo: Vivian Maier (Girl Crying) N.Y. 1954
She huffed and she puffed and she stomped her small feet. She whined and she cried and she kicked the car seat. She refused to wear shoes, threw her coat on the ground. Made sure everyone heard her for miles around. She tossed food on the floor. Then asked for some more … Like a kid on a mission for the spoiled child edition.
Evening came.
Gramma called.
Mama handed the phone.
“Tell me now, little one, what on earth’s going on?”
“I’m a crank,” the child said in response. “Now Mama’s tired, all on my own.”
For more of Vivian Maier’s amazing photography: http://www.vivianmaier.com/
For The Daily Post
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The Lost Quartet
He reached into his pocket and rummaged around. “I’ve brought something to show you,” he said, eyes searching mine. “But it’s a secret …”
“Oh?” I offered.
“Well, sort of,” he shrugged as an uncertain smile worked its way into his cheeks. “I took them to school … but I didn’t tell anyone … because we’re not allowed to … The teacher woulda’ taken them away and other kids maybe woulda’ told her or asked to see them and then she’d know …”
I hiked my eyes up and nodded my expectation.
The grin grew but it still held a sheen of sad.
He pulled his fist out of his pocket and turned it so the back of his hand rested on the table, then ceremoniously uncurled his fingers.
Four grains of rice in tiny vials, strung onto a keychain ring.
“They have names on them,” he said reverently.
I squinted and reached for a magnifying glass. Handed him one.
Our heads met over the small nest of palm and he mouthed the words, more sigh than voice. “Fee, Fi, Fo and Fum.”
A quartet recently eaten not by a giant smelling the blood of an English man but by a feline with a swishing tail who had knocked the fishbowl over and left not one golden scale behind.
For The Daily Post
Na'ama Yehuda 
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