Treasure In The Sand

May 25, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Beach combing, Creative writing, Flash Fiction, Galway, Ireland, Micro-fiction, Relationships, Timing, Treasure, What Pegman Saw, Writing Challenge, Writing prompt, Yearning 12 Comments

Galway, Ireland (photo: Fum Bally on Unsplash)

He leaned on his elbows and watched, periodically checking the clock and the tide-chart that hung next to it. Any moment now.

The briny air tickled a sneeze out of him, and he debated whether he had time to go fetch a handkerchief or if he could just use his shirt. Laundry day would not be for another full week. The handkerchief won. He rushed back to the window, flushing with a combination of exertion and embarrassment.

It was sobering to be faced with his own obsession.

The waves hissed and brushed against the beach. The ocean sighed. The breeze picked up. It would rain tonight. He believed his bones.

Then he saw her, walking on the exposed strip of rock-spattered sand. Her head was down, searching. She held a plastic bucket in her hand. It had seen better days.

They both had.

She was his treasure in the sand.

For What Pegman Saw: Galway, Ireland

The Wait

May 8, 2020May 8, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Meditations, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: All is One, Ancient, Community, Evolution, Flash Fiction, Folklore, Homecoming, humanity, Photo prompt, WritePhoto, Writing prompt, Yearning 12 Comments

Photo: Sue Vincent

In the days of old they’d walk out on the water at high tide, appearing to float atop the waves.

It was a sign of trust.

Also of recognition. For they’d come from the water, after all. Their bodies might have forgotten how to live in it, but their cousins — seals, dolphins, whales — still held links to what was possible. And they spoke of long swims and deep dives and frolicking, and of how one day they’d all come home again.

And so they hoped.

And let themselves be carried by tentative feet on mossy rocks built far in and well past the breakers, all the way to the beginnings of the depths.

First as children whose hands were grasped by others’. Then as youngsters showing off their balance and their fearless speed (and perhaps a bit of memory from within their cells, of swiveling agility and joy being in of itself a kind of swimming). Then as new adults, saddled with fuller understanding and big bellies or wrapped by legs and arms of small ones holding tight around the waist and neck. Then as elders, wary of a fall and fearful even more of a child letting go of their hand and drowning. And at the last, as age counted no more, carried, offered, sent home to the sea.

Yes, in the days of old they’d walk out onto the water.

In celebration. In commemoration. In passage. In ritual and prayer and courage and communal hope.

Till they forgot.

And the waves licked the rocks till very little path was left, and dolphins and seals and whales no longer were spoken to and had moved on, and the earth and depths curled tight to wait.

For the people’s lungs still ached for the swim, and their heart still beat to the rhythm of the surf as they slept, and they still made a bit of ocean in their eyes, especially when they wept.

For Sue Vincent’s Write Photo

Unyielding Stone

February 16, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Meditations, Muse and Flow, Photography, Poetry, Reflections, Writing Tags: Creative writing, Fountain, Impossible, Lovers, Palace, Poetry, Relationships, Sculpture, Vienna, Weekend Writing Prompt, Yearning 10 Comments

Vienna palace SmadarHalperinEpshtein (3)

Photo: Smadar Halperin-Epshtein

Never quite able to move beyond the yearning,

Formed into a pose

Between desire and

Response,

They are frozen, sculptured into something

That cannot become reality

Despite constant striving,

Their despair exposed

At a heartless ornamental pond.

Still their eyes do not the silent gaze drop.

Even as their hands are

Locked away from the ability to

Enfold,

Set in stone they are forever reaching

For an embrace

That cannot

Form.

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Sculpture in 71 words

One Down

December 7, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: CCC, Flash Fiction, Folklore, Magic, Micro-fiction, Mythology, Petrifaction, Photo Fiction, Photo prompt, Relief, Yearning 9 Comments

Photo: #CCC56

It wished it could put its wings down.

For once.

Or rather, once again.

It was convinced that the only thing worse than being placed under a spell was being placed under a spell while one’s appendages were … well … spread-eagled.

Sure, the effect of petrifaction was dramatic. Everyone liked a good statue. What everyone conveniently forgot (for any educated person would have read about Narnia) was that most statues that appeared life-like were actually … petrified.

In every sense of the word.

You try holding your pee for that long. And let’s not even talk about kidney stones.

Or eggs.

Or last year’s meal, still lodged.

And yet, it was the perpetual taking off that rankled more than anything. The anticipatory knots in the back of the shoulders. The wind’s lift that refused to take hold.

It was a relief when the earthquake broke a wing.

One down. One to go.

For Crispina’s CCC challenge 56

In Waiting

November 17, 2019November 17, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Photography, Poetry, Reflections, Writing Tags: Belonging, Central Park, Hat, Just because, Left behind, Lens-Artists, Lost, Photo Challenge, Photography, Poetry, Relationships, Waiting, Yearning 11 Comments

Photo: Na’ama Yehuda

I am waiting for you

To come back.

To grab hold

And place me

Against your forehead,

As you adjust the strap.

I am waiting

For you

To return

From where you’d left me

Behind

Or forgot

I might yearn

To be perched

On your brow

Holding firm

Against burn.

For the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Waiting

When She Leaves

June 21, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Creative writing, Flash Fiction, hope, Leaving, Making do, Micro-fiction, Past and Future, SoCS, Survival, Writing Challenge, Writing prompt, Yearning 20 Comments

shallow focus photography of brown tree trunk

Photo: Mahima on Pexels.com

When she leaves, there will be time enough for all the things that should have happened and yet didn’t. When she leaves, a space will open to allow what was yearned for but manifested not. When she leaves — in a week or month or year or decade — a leaf would turn to let the newness grow.

When she leaves.

Yet for the time being she remains.

She has no choice. Or not a real one.

She plods along the rutted path made by the heavy feet she’d dragged so many times before. She does what must be done. She smiles. She nods. She cooks. She holds.

She finds in every day a small reminder of the hope. A sliver of a dream. A memory of what is yet to come.

It sustains her.

It has to.

It’s all she has.

Until she leaves.

For the SoCS writing prompt: Leaves

A Heart, Missing

May 12, 2019November 12, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Memoriam, Muse and Flow, Photography, Poetry, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: Emptiness, Grief, Loss, Miscarriage, Missing, Mother's Day, Mothering, One Word Sunday, Poetry, Pregnancy, Unspoken, Yearning 17 Comments

Photo: Yael Yehuda

There stands the empty crib

The room that will not hear

The sounds of cries or coos or laughter.

There are the walls,

Fresh paint

Fresh pain

For the awaited,

For a broken chapter.

A heart

Missing

Breast and breath

For an eternity of loss,

Till the hereafter.

Note: Dedicated with love to all empty-armed mothers (in all their manifestations and realities and outward presentations), on this Mother’s Day.

For Debbie’s One Word Sunday: Missing

The Boy Who Was Very Brave

January 12, 2019January 12, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Professional Development, Reflections, Things Kids Say, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: 6WS, Being seen, children, Flash Fiction, Going home, Heartbreak, Hospital, Micro-fiction, orphanage, Trauma and Development, Weekend Writing Prompt, Yearning 20 Comments

left human injected with hose on white textile

Photo: rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

“Be brave,” he said, and closed his eyes to ward off at least the pain of seeing his skin pierced by sharpness.

“Just a scratch,” the nurse stated in rote-like monotone, forgetting that for this boy nothing at this point was ‘just a scratch,’ especially not with veins well worn from prodding, let alone in a child who must struggle to understand why any of this was necessary.

“Be brave,” he said again, and his voice shook, and a tear slid under his lids and traveled down the small cheek to settle on his ear like a tiny sorrow-diamond.

“I’m sorry,” the nurse pressed her lips together when the third poke failed and another scarred blood vessel rolled under her needle. She’ll have to try another site. How on earth did someone not put a port in this child yet?

“Be brave,” the boy clenched his eyes to slits but more tears fled. “Be brave.”

The nurse looked up, distressed by his determined resignation. She paused and placed her gloved hand on his cheek. “You are,” she said. “Very.”

Eyes still shut, he shuddered and she wasn’t sure if he understood. She pulled a chair to his gurney and smoothed his hair. Someone from the Children’s Home had brought him to the hospital with another flareup, but the orphanage was too short-staffed to have anyone stay with him, especially when the boy wasn’t fussy and reportedly “used to” the hospital.

As if there could be such a thing as a child being “used to” being alone in a hospital.

“You are brave,” she repeated. Her eyes stung and perhaps the emotion in her voice more than her words filtered through his bracing because his eyes opened to meet hers.

“You don’t deserve any of this,” she said. “No one does. What you do deserve is to get better, and for people to really see and understand how brave you are. You are so so brave.”

Another tear rolled toward his ear. She hoped this one wasn’t from fear but from recognizing a connection.

“I’ll be as gentle as I can,” she promised. “I know this must be awful, but I need to get a line in for your medicine. Can you be brave for me just a bit longer?”

He held her eyes before he nodded.

“Good boy. So let’s just get this over with?”

He nodded again and this time did not close his eyes but hung them on her face. He did not look away or make a sound as she flicked and poked and needled.

“Good lad,” she praised, relieved, as she finally placed the clear bandage over the IV.

He took in a long breath.

“Can I get you anything?” she lingered, wanting to do something for this boy, so small and pale and alone.

He nodded.

“Some juice or crackers, maybe? It’ll do you good to get some of these in you,” she chattered. “I bet we have some toys I can borrow from the playroom for you.”

He held her gaze.

“Can I go home with you?” he asked. “I promise to be brave for you. I’ll be brave every day.”

(*Based on a true story.)

For Six Word Saturday

The Gift

October 3, 2018Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: 100WordChallenge, Family, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Micro-fiction, Relationships, Short Story, Social Skills, Writing prompt, Yearning 50 Comments

She left him a gift.

She knew he wasn’t likely to acknowledge it. It was possible he wouldn’t know or care where it had come from. It didn’t matter. Or perhaps it did – and terribly – but she could do nothing to change it. Where others sought connection and cultivated relationships, her father’s world revolved around rocks, shells, sticks, pebbles, stones. Those he caressed, inspected, studied, catalogued.

She’d learned to expect nothing. It was the only way to lessen heartbreak.

She left the coral piece on the table. Perhaps if he kept it, it would be as if he saw her.

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers