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Kathleen March

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jan, 2020

Stories (411)

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411 Stories

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How to mangle a poem

I was looking out into the darkness. It was about ten o’clock and snow was coming down steadily. Almost embarrassed, I began to recite Robert Frost’s poem like the fourteen year old girl I once was. But I had to prepare a class for my students in 400 level English and all I could do was mouth Frost’s words. How to bring the words into the realm of reciters like myself? I would ask them all to describe what was going on in the sixteen lines of pure simplicity. They would submit their ideas and I… well, who knows what I would do with them? Any...

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They sat, they saw…

They were at the airport. One of them was leaving, would be gone soon. Very soon. Too soon. One would stay behind. The other one. The one who could not, or did not want to, leave. Nothing was said into the silence. Nothing was said, but nevertheless it was put there and stayed. It, unlike one of them, was going nowhere. That might have been the reason why at that moment it was clinging to every edge there, to everything, to all around. To the universe, it seemed. It, the unwords or lack of words, was forever. It was perhaps dead, but perhaps...

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A place for everything

Write a story in which the first and last sentences are exactly the same. That’s what someone once said, so she listened and began to write, not words with a purpose, maybe just to write because some things need a forever attached to them. She thought how fortunate it had been to understand what that forever meant for her and knew she could prove it. Such a good feeling, maybe even more than good. This is how it had all started: There had been eight words (in English, I think I’m falling in love with you), seven in another language that al...

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Addicted

I’ve thought often about whether or not I have addictions, as everyone should do. I also believe we’re all addicted to something. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing, you know; it all depends on what the addictions are, how many we have, and how strong they are. Can we have them and still function? That’s a hard question to answer. Anyway, here are some of my thoughts on the matter: Addictions are often thought of as related to obsessions. We say we’re addicted to something when what we really mean is we’re obsessed with it. That can be appl...

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Feathers

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -That perches in the soul -And sings the tune without the words -And never stops - at all - Everybody in the universe knows Emily Dickinson’s poem about hope and the vast majority find it inspiring or at least worth memorizing. Hope is, after all, necessary for all of us, and most of us find it at some time in life. The more important question is whether we manage to hold on to it or whether it flies away between our fingers and never returns. I remember when hope was everywhere, when - without realizing i...

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The cat made me do it…

I was sitting and thinking, a bit like Poe, perhaps, because it was a dreary evening and I was nearly napping, although the sound that I heard was not exactly a rapping. Yes, I was feeling weak and weary, but I was not mad, just nearly napping. It was late after all. My thoughts wandered, and I even caught the faintest echo of a word that could have been Nevermore. I shook my head and looked around, but just as expected, there was no raven. Instead, I was able to make out in the dim candlelight the form of a woman and my eyes decided to foll...

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Can’t scare me…

You can’t scare me. You said that in a tone of voice that told me you were laughing at me while denying my right to resist your arrogant dare. You’ve always thought you were better than me. You’re brave. Nothing frightens you. That’s what you think, at least. I can’t scare you? Oh yes I can. I have receipts and I’m coming for you. I’ve been mentored by Edgar Allan Poe himself. The master. Don’t say I haven’t been under his wing because he’s long gone, because you have no idea of what our relationship is. He might not be one of the goriest wr...

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Yeah

a character who can’t tell the difference between their dreams and reality 23rd Psalm, also known as the Lord’s Prayer: 1 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. I feel very safe, very loved. Knowing there is a higher being who will protect me, who is in fact protecting me, is so comforting. I shall not want, meaning I will not need anything; I will have enough. Enough food, a roof over my head, a job, friends and family. Life will be good, always. Life is good right now. It is wonderful to have these things. There is peace in the world, ...

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Walking on water

She was working again on translations of Galician literature, when it occurred to her to try a familiar poem. What follows has been taken from her journal, so it is just a few ideas jotted down casually, of little value to anyone beyond herself. The journal […………….] Pasa, pasa caladiño, Có teu manso rebulir, Camiño dó mar salado, Camiño dó mar sin fin, E leva estas lagrimiñas Si as de chegar por ali Pretiño dos meus amores Pretiño dó meu vivir. Ay! quen lagrimiña fora! Prá ir meu ben unda tí... Quen fixera un camiñiño Para pasar, ay de mi...

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The ritual thing to do

I refused to sign. You looked at me and asked, your head turned away (probably to keep me from seeing the tear slipping down your left cheek; you were driving and I was your passenger): “Where did I go wrong?” I will tell you what my answer was a bit further on. I am a bad daughter, I know. Or at least a daughter with a guilty conscience. I chose to tell the truth when I should have lied to you, maybe. What were the consequences of my choice not to sign the paper you had passed over to me while driving? What if I had signed it? You certainly...

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Giving up is hard to do

I’m so heartbroken, but I should have known the relationship would end this way, that it was bound to end. Once upon a time it was a great relationship and it seemed - to me at least - that it would last forever… forever! Oh, the power of love, whether it be blind or not… You see, I once believed everything I was told. Even my parents approved. No, it was more than that - they even encouraged the relationship, they left it to me like it was an inheritance. They were, in fact, nearly penniless, yet they worshipped this thing that had given th...

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Flipping the script

Things are getting bad, really bad. Nobody is able to understand what is going on. Nobody is allowed now to ask questions. That doesn’t matter, because nobody dares to question anything anyway. “Question” - whether a noun or a verb - is simply off the table. If you are walking down the street, sitting on the grass in the park, or having your favorite latte and overhear the word, first you will cringe, or wince, and then you will do everything in your power to get far away from it. “Question” is, plain and simple, not something you need or wa...

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Walking

Tonight I find myself thinking about a path. It might be secret, or magical, or both. Heaven knows how many of them there are in childhood, in the books we read. (Yes, I grew up reading books, real ones, most from the town library. There were so many paths to follow through those pages. So many words to traverse, bridges, steppingstones, dried ruts in country roads. All magically absent from my hands, because the books were returned to the library and because I grew up and moved on. Down paths of my own.) Now I ponder those paths, some leadi...

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Holding the Dark

Cando penso que te fuches,Negra sombra que m'asombras,Ô pe d'os meus cabezalesTornas facéndome mofa. Cando maxino qu'és idaN'ò mesmo sol te m'amostras,Y eres á estrela que brila,Y eres ò vento que zoa. Si cantan, ês ti que cantas;Si choran, ês ti que choras,Y ês o marmurio d'o rioY ês á noite y és á aurora. En todo estás e ti ès todo,Pra min y en min mesmo moras,Nin m'abandonarás nunca,Sombra que sempre m'asombras Just when I think you’ve gone,Black haze that amazes me,Back you come to the head of my bedBack again to daze me. Just when I thi...

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The Assignment

Class time would be over in five minutes. The writing assignment she gave her students that day was to write a story that included either the line “I don’t belong here” or the line “Don’t mind me.” It didn’t sound all that difficult, she thought. Short lines, from a personal perspective. Around a thousand words, unless the response was a poem, in which case the student would need to talk it over with her. After everyone had left the classroom, however, the Professor began to wonder if anybody would notice the reason for juxtaposing the two l...

3 likes