Ain’t Got Much Of

March 4, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Elders, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Half-empty, Half-full, Life Lessons, Making do, Micro-fiction, Shopping, Widsom, Writing prompt 54 Comments

Photo prompt: Roger Bultot

“She keeps the shelves half-empty.”

I turned at the voice. A gnarled hand leaned heavily on a carved stick. The man’s chest was almost parallel to the stained cement floor.

I crouched so I could make eye-contact yet spare him the strain of lifting his head. He smiled. For such an ossified body, his expression was remarkably lively.

“My wife,” he raised an eyebrow at the display. “I’d space the boxes, but she says that what people think we ain’t got much of, reminds them of the empty spaces in their own pantries and how there’s always room for more.”

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers

Readied

March 2, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Reflections, Writing Tags: Creative writing, dVerse, Exploration, Haibun, hope, Mars, Poetry, Space, travel, World's future, Writing prompt 2 Comments

Photo: Nicolas Lobos on Unsplash

They donned the new suits

Of exploration

White and fluid for

The deep cold of space

And the vast darkness

Of the Universe.

They filed into the

Craft readied to blast

Toward a red Mars

Carrying hope for

Yet another home

In which to draw breath.

For the dVerse Haibun poetry challenge: Mars

Nostalgia

March 1, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Bus ride, Going to school, Hadera, Israel, Memory, middle-school, Morning, Siblings, Sisters, What Pegman Saw, Writing Challenge, Writing prompt 29 Comments

Photo: Hadera, Israel

The bus rumbled on the narrow road, slow behind the loaded tractor wagon. A mix of diesel fumes, damp earth, and faint notes of orange blossoms wafted through the open crack in the heavy window.

They were going to be late. Again.

She sighed and glanced at her youngest sister, automatically feeling for the change-of-uniform she carried at the bottom of her school bag for the eventuality that her sister’s car-sickness would get the upper hand.

Across the narrow aisle, a woman coughed wetly into a handkerchief and shifted the plastic baskets that crowded the small space under her feet. Those will be packed full on the ride back from Hadera, their area’s shopping center and nearest ‘big’ town.

Finally, past Gan-Shmuel, the snailing tractor turned into a field and the bus picked up speed. Houses marked the city’s boundaries. She nudged her other sister awake. “We’re getting off soon.”

For What Pegman Saw: Hadera, Israel

Note: Depicting a very true (almost daily) childhood memory …

Epoch’s End

February 29, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Meditations, Memoriam, Muse and Flow, Poetry, Reflections, Writing Tags: Creative writing, End, Epoch, Last breath, Life and death, Passing on, Poetry, Transition, Understanding, Weekend Writing Prompt, Writing prompt 18 Comments

Photo: Amitai Asif

As her eyes finally

Closed

And her breath

Not returned,

She knew

What awaited her

Just

‘Round the bend:

A new journey

Ascends

Life beyond

Epoch’s end.

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Epoch in 27 words

Note: Dedicated to all who face the final journey … and thus to all … for we all would. May we walk life’s path the way we can and should.

Against The Flow

February 28, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: CCC, Flash Fiction, Flow, Job satisfaction, Just for fun, Micro-fiction, Mistake, Supervisor, Work, Writing Challenge, Writing prompt 16 Comments

CCC #68

“This won’t do,” Marc shook his hard-hatted head and lifted the dreaded red marker to the clipboard.

Nicholas scratched under his own protective gear in effort to control his irritation. Marc’s been insufferable ever since he’d been promoted, parading with his supervisor’s paraphernalia as if it made him a demigod. For the millionth time, Nicholas wondered whether Bob The Builder — their blue coveralls donning boss — had assigned him to Marc’s team just to get back at him for the moniker. As if it was Nicholas’s fault that the man fit the cartoon character to a T.

“How come not?” he managed when the silence lingered.

“The arrow,” Marc pointed the board across the water.

“What about the arrow?!” Nicholas snarled. He almost fell, painting the darn thing while standing in a dingy.

“Pointing the wrong way,” Marc smirked in evident satisfaction. “Won’t do to go against the flow, you know.”

For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge #68

Aftereffect

February 28, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Creative writing, Current affairs, Elections, Expectations, Leadership, Poetry, Politics, Reality, Rhyme, SoCS, Writing prompt 10 Comments

Photo: Arnaud Jaegers on Unsplash

It does not do to elect

Only those who self-select.

Because it is best to object

To any who hold no respect

For others’ ability to reflect

On the facts in each subject.

For if we fail now to protect

The need of everyone to connect

And the necessity to detect

Those who humanity eject,

We might injustice reinfect

And cement moral defect

As the greedy now expect

Blind loyalty by genuflect.

For Linda Hill’s SoCS writing prompt: “ect”

Have Your Fill

February 10, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Meditations, Muse and Flow, Photography, Poetry, Reflections, Writing Tags: dVerse, Fill, hope, New life, Poetry, Potential, Quadrille, tenderness, Writing Challenge, Writing prompt 44 Comments

Photo: Na’ama Yehuda

Fill your eyes with the budding

Potential of life as it bounds

To the surface, bursting forth,

A force to be reckoned, with a sigh

Of tremulous

Hope.

Fill your heart with the tenderest

New things, which will bloom

In your soul

Deep within.

For the dVerse quadrille challenge: fill

Golden End

February 9, 2020February 10, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Flash Fiction, Going home, healing, Micro-fiction, Relationships, Santo Tomas, Spain, Sunset, Therapy, vacation, What Pegman Saw, Writing prompt 4 Comments

Santo Tomas, Spain (Ricky Rew on Unsplash)

It was a golden end.

To the day. To their journey. To what they managed to do together, for the first time in a long time without bitter exchanges that gouged their hearts and left them both scarred.

The trip to Santo Tomas was an impromptu thing. The healing they’d invested in was not.

“We could go, you know,” he’d mentioned as she’d browsed to pass the time while waiting outside the therapist’s office. It was always an awkward time, sitting together in the ante room, aware that what came next was lancing boils and airing out things too noxious to attempt alone.

“Can we, though?” she’d replied, layering many meanings.

“I think so,” he’d said.

His hesitation, more than anything, was what had her agree.

The therapist’s hesitation, too. She wanted to prove the woman wrong.

She watched him jog by sun-glow. Her heart warmed. They were going home.

For What Pegman Saw: Santo Tomás

Sentry Sign

February 7, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Ancestry, CCC, Creative writing, Flash Fiction, Folklore, Graveyard, History, Micro-fiction, Photo prompt, Surprise, Unexpected, Writing prompt 10 Comments

“Can you believe this weather? The sun is …” she stopped cold, her jaw frozen in mid-sentence. Her heart thundered, threatening to escape the confines of her chest.

“Mauve?”

Eric’s voice sounded as if filtered through molasses. Someplace in her stunned mind she noted to herself that she finally understood why cartoonists slurred speech and movement into agonizing slow-motion during moments of high-drama. It was as if the world itself spun differently. Time simultaneously lingered and lost all definition.

Her finger labored against a suddenly-too-heavy gravity. She pointed at the gravestone.

“The swirls,” she managed, her tongue was a parched brick in a desert.

She forced herself to breathe and swallow. Paradoxically the motion released some moisture back into her arid mouth.

“It is the mark of my ancestors,” she whispered. “A sacred, secret, rarely-used Sentry Sign. I’d only seen it once. I didn’t even know they’d been to this land.”

For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge