Photo: Lynn Jordan on Unsplash
Shuttered windows did not
Matter,
For all who lacked knew that
The door remained unlatched
The rusty locks, unfastened,
To let the needy enter
And rest their weary heads
Within,
Their huddled warmth
Steadfast in lieu of
Hearth,
Never closed from
The ancient inn.
For the dVerse poetry quadrille challenge: close
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
“Do you still have it?”
“Let me see,” he nodded at the screen even though he knew she couldn’t see him.
“Okay.”
The tremor in her voice told him everything: How tender she felt, how brave she was, how she couldn’t bear for him to ask directly lest it shatter what brittle control she managed to maintain.
“Got it,” he breathed. Attached. Hit ‘send.’ “Check your email.”
The line was silent. Then her voice, full of tears. “I knew it. I knew it hadn’t been a dream. She said she’d visit. From the after. Exactly this way. … And she came.”
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
Photo: Inbar Asif
He lay himself
Bare
On the ground.
Stripped into
A fraction of his
Former self, yet
In his memory
A giant
Still,
And let the blanket of
Red
Caress him
Through to the
Other side of life,
And into the
Eternal
Sleep.
For the dVerse poetry challenge: red
Photo: JK Monument, Brasilia; Maurilio Quadros on Unsplash
“Why is he up there?” Santiago shaded his eyes against the glare.
“To be close to the angels,” A-avó said.
“Isn’t he already dead?” the boy asked softly. He didn’t want to offend his grandmother, whose age seemed close enough to dying.
“Ah,” A-avó shook her head with sorrow. “He is with Jesus now some years. But he kept many from joining Heaven too early.”
The boy’s eyes lit with curiosity. “Did he do magic, A-avó?”
“In his way,” the old woman nodded. “Magic enough to me. Your O-avô would not have lived if it weren’t for President JK bringing medicine to us who lived in the country. The malaria and the tuberculosis would have taken your O-avô. As they had taken mine.”
Santiago thought of how it would be for him to grow up without the man he loved. “Obrigado,” he bowed to the statue.
“Good boy,” A-avó smiled.
For What Pegman Saw: Brasilia, Brazil
Photo: Crispina Kemp
“We’re gonna have to scale things down,” The Earl noted.
“Yep,” Monterey scratched the stubble that sprouted, stubborn, on his chest. He was going to refuse the grooming nonsense next time.
“Got the shrink?”
Monterey nodded. He’d put up with the thumping for the last bit of journey. Annoying though it was, the noise did save him the trouble of going into the back compartment to check whether the cargo was still alive.
“Have him at it, then.” The Earl turned and strode back into his cab.
Monterey waited till The Earl disappeared from view before bending to rummage through the vehicle’s boot. He plucked the squirming figure out of its perforated container and held the furious man between finger and thumb.
“You’re a shrink,” he rumbled, pointing another hand at the air-ship’s anchor and chains. “These are too big. Can’t have’em stay this way. So you best shrink this.”
For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge
Photo: Amit Jain on Unsplash
She could not have guessed
What is right
What is wrong
So she just muddled
On.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Muddle in 16 words
Photo: Sue Vincent
They filed into the toothy circle, a long double line, holding hands over the green strip that split them apart.
The stone pillars stood, immobile, ever present, waiting.
There have always been golden fields in all directions. Wild, then cultivated. The rustling of the ripened plants replacing a hush that would otherwise feed unease.
For there will be no voice heard.
No word.
No song.
No shout.
Nothing said.
Just a long line of humility, stepping up the path and through the eye of the ancient circle. Waiting to be cleansed.
To be whole.
To be seen.
To walk on.
Ahead.
Out the other side and down the second path where a widening triangle fanned into the distant horizon, mirroring the measure of relief.
And from the far far spaces, well beyond the hills, the sound of voices, whispers freed, a humming on the breeze.
It would be the last place anyone would look, and the first thing everyone would see.
It made it perfect.
She always gravitated toward hiding in plain sight. There was equity in the blinding effect of what people learned to not see or did not know could be there in the first place.
How long would it take, she wondered, for her cover to be blown?
The longest had been almost four weeks. The closest call had her discovered before the first patch of paint dried. She’d almost lost everything that day, and the consequences were brutal, but she’d learned from it. As she had from every challenge and obstacle. Even those that were not meant to be instructive.
That was how she rolled. How she wrest back some control.
For now, this box of aqua perched on sand, seasonally emptied of its contents, was home.
The surf a lullaby.
For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge
He packed his bags late at night, tiptoeing around the sleeping figures of his flatmates. His plan would only work for one.
Well, two, perhaps … But much as he wanted company, he knew from experience that the only person he could truly rely on was himself, and he couldn’t afford to add the caprice of another human into an already iffy situation.
He made his way through quiet side-streets, ears perked and eyes peeled. He would approach the lot from the back, scale the pole, rope and lug his luggage up, distribute the weight, check the dials.
Takeoff before dawn.
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
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