Frozen In Time

December 29, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Memoriam, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: CCC, children, compassion, Flash Fiction, History, Memorial, Micro-fiction, Photo prompt, PTSD, War, Writing prompt 17 Comments

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“What’s he doing there, Papa?”

“Serving his time,” he didn’t need to look to know what his granddaughter was pointing at. He could see it with his eyes closed. In his sleep. Seared into his very dreams.

“What time?” the innocence in the child’s voice returned him to the present. She could not know. So many died so she would not need to.

“His time in war,” he explained.

“To fight?” the green eyes were round under the cascade of unruly hair. The girl never could abide any hair-ties. Her mother despaired. He found it enchanting. He’d forgotten what it was to have hair

He nodded.

“But he’s just watching,” the child noted.

“Yes,” he nodded.

“Forever?”

He looked up at the man frozen in time. So many of them were.

“I hope not, child.”

She pressed his hand.

“I shall bring him a blanket,” she said. “And a pup.”

For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge

Not Yet

May 17, 2021Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Current events, dVerse, Grief, healing, Heartbreak, Poetry, Quadrille, Sorrow, Violence, War, Wound 36 Comments

(Photo: Rainer Krienke on Unsplash)

There is a scar ripped open

In the canyon

Of this wound.

Where sorrow has wound time

Around grief tighter than

Some

Assumed.

There are still pools

Of tears

Repeatedly

Bled

As future holds

Its breath.

To broken hearts

Peace has not

Come yet.

For the dVerse quadrille poetry challenge: wound

All Color Gone

November 18, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Memoriam, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, End violence, Enough, Family, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Grief, History, Loss, Micro-fiction, War 56 Comments

They will not be coming home.

She paced the few steps from her door to the deck’s edge and back again. She gazed up at the washed out sky. Watched as the shadows encroached on the small lawn to blanket the rocks in the graying garden. Her breath was heavy in her chest.

They will not be coming home.

With every blink, the hues were fading. Taking with them memories of laughter, of pitter-patter, of wet wool and hot cocoa steaming by the fire.

The telegram emblazoned in her mind.

The boys will not be coming home.

All color gone.

Note: Dedicated to all those who knew and know such loss.

Photo prompt: © Sarah Potter

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

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

The Hidden

April 3, 2020April 4, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Adversity, CCC, Flash Fiction, Hiding, Historical fiction, History, Micro-fiction, Never Again, Persecution, Photo prompt, War, Writing Challenge 13 Comments

Photo: Crispina Kemp

It had been their favorite place to play as children. Filled with old tools and lopsided shelves. A leaky roof that hindered the rain from soaking them when the weather turned and they had misjudged the time.

She never would have thought that the shed would become a shelter from a lot worse than the rain. And without end. For there was no place to return.

There will be no welcome in the farmstead. Not anymore.

No warm soup waiting. No blanket. No fire to steam wet clothes as fingers thawed. Instead of comfort, they’d likely send the dogs.

She still could not quite understand how quickly times had changed. How she’d gone from part-of to pariah.

Was she the same? How could she be, when the patch she was made to wear now defined her?

A jew, she was their plague. How long would the shed conceal her?

For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge

A Visit From Paul

January 25, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Memoriam, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Delaware, Flash Fiction, History, Memoriam, Micro-fiction, Navy, Revisiting, Shipyard, Veterans, War, What Pegman Saw, Writing prompt 16 Comments

Milford, Delaware (Photo: Ray Hennessy on Unsplash)

“He comes to visit,” a man’s voice jarred her out of her reverie.

She’s been watching a waterfowl in the sparkling water. It’s been staring back, she felt.

“The bird?” she turned. The speaker was a frail-looking man who still managed a bearing that stated “military.”

“If it is that.”

She glanced at the crane. The oldster sounded neither confused nor joking.

“Tell me,” she rose to make room on the bench.

The man extended a hand to shake. “Smith. US Navy.”

“Marcia,” she returned.

They used to build ships in Milford, he told her. Built the four-masted Albert F. Paul, too. Launched it from the Abbot shipyard in 1917.

“174 footer, she was,” Smith sighed. “I would’ve been onboard, you see, if I hadn’t been injured. Would’ve gone down with my mates when the Germans torpedoed her in 1942.”

“The fallen seamen,” he lifted his chin toward the bird, “they visit me.”

For What Pegman Saw: Delaware

Portal To Tomorrow

January 7, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Photography, Poetry, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Current affairs, Enough, fpj-photo-challenge, History, Learning from mistakes, No More War, Photo Challenge, Poetry, Tomorrow, Trauma, Trumpets, War 6 Comments

Photo: Smadar Halperin-Epshtein

In the portal to

Tomorrow

Let the trumpets

Ring not

Alarm

And rush to

Harm,

But stop to the

Hubris

Of war.

In the portal for

Tomorrow

May those men

Who rashly

Spend

The life of

Others,

Know the call

Of trumpets

Often heralded

Only pain,

More gore.

Enough.

No more.

For the Tuesday Photo Challenge: Portal

Gone Today

November 11, 2019November 11, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Memoriam, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Flash Fiction, Grief, Kreative Kue, Loss, Memoriam, Micro-fiction, No More War, Photo prompt, Remembrance Day, Veterans Day, War 14 Comments

Photo: Keith Channing

They came for the car today.

It’s just a car, she tried to tell herself. It would not make sense to keep it. Not with the fees and with the debt on it only increasing. Oh, she tried, but there was no way around the loss of it.

No way around loss. In general.

She couldn’t bear to go outside to see it off. She stayed indoors, her nose glued to the window, her sweaty palms pressing life-lines into the glass, her heart in shreds.

It’s been his car.

And he would not be coming home to drive it.

Note: Dedicated on this Veterans Day (US) and Remembrance Day (The Commonwealth), to all who fought and won and lost and left and returned, or left and did not return, or not in the same way they’d left. And to the many who still are away in uniform. You are seen. You are known. May all come home whole. And may humanity one day learn peace and no more war.

For Keith’s Kreative Kue #237