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Kathleen March

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jan, 2020

Stories (389)

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8. I Should’ve Known

Lavinia’s story I should have known better, muttered Lavinia. I should have known that Rosalía would be able to comply with the American writers’ request for her to find companions in her quest to achieve a career in literature. I’m not unaware of the types of communication used by women in distant times. The types and places, I should add, because gatherings at church events, quilting bees, things of that nature, provided opportunities for discussion without censorship. That’s Feminist Historiography 101. After all, these English speakers ...

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7. The Gift With no End

1.Rosalía received a package she had not expected. It had been carefully wrapped in heavy brown paper and tied tightly with twine only the sharpest knife could break. Was it delivered to her by mistake? She rarely received packages, especially of that size, yet this one was definitely addressed to her, every part spelled properly. There were several stamps that indicated this one had been mailed from somewhere very far away. She didn’t know how much postage had been required because it wasn’t the same monetary system she used, but that reall...

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6. Never Assume Anything (2/2)

Rosalía’s Journal I’m not sorry for writing to those women now. That’s because every writer I’ve sent a letter to has responded. Maybe being bold has its advantages. I never expected that would happen, though. Not in a million years. To tell the truth, I didn’t expect any answers at all. After all, an unknown ‘daughter of a single mother’ - not my concern, but the Church seems to care - would have to be mad to send such letters to well-known women in another country. Who cares about inquiries from a complete unknown? What could possibly just...

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5. Sorry is a State of Mind

Dear … I am truly sorry for imposing on your ladyship’s time, which must contain ever so many obligations…Dear … Please forgive me for daring to importune you with the enclosed request…My Dear(est) Madam … By no means do I wish to impose upon your good will by…Dearest …Most Admired Lady …The list had a few other salutations, but the woman bent over the simple wooden writing desk had scratched them out. She wrote first in Galician, then in Spanish, knowing neither was likely to be accessible to the recipient or recipients, who were more ...

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4. Shiver (1/2)

It was later afternoon and Rosalía was sitting at her desk in the small apartment where she lived in Santiago de Compostela. She was content to have a room of her own long before a well-known British writer would make it a household phrase, so to speak. Writing required thinking, and being with family members more often required actions or at least speaking. On this occasion the dialogue between woman and page was obviously silent. La soledad sonora, as years later a lesser-known member of the Spanish Generation of 1927 would call it. Thunde...

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3. Rosalía’s Diary

Diary (Monday or any other day)Day 1Was it wrong to publish what I did? Did I really offend that many people? After all, there were no accusations, no threats, no promises to hurt anyone. I had no intention of hurting anybody. It was simply what I needed to say. Of course I put it in writing, which means I wanted people to know what I felt, but I didn’t actually attack anyone. I was biting my tongue every minute when I wrote what I did. Nevertheless, I’ve gotten so many letters and I’ve seen quite a few letters in the periodicals compla...

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2. Dear Reader, Are You Lost?

Required reading:  Previous story, “A Writer is Born.” (It is the only way to understand the references made here.) Part 2 (or Epilogue 2): Dear Reader, are you lost? My Journal: Day 1 Did you notice yet that this is merely an exercise in stream of consciousness. It might well be useful in helping you the rest of this book-to-be. This is not arrogance on my part; the truth be told, even I am beginning to feel the entanglement of the threads that are attached to the voices that are poking their heads up in random fashion. There ...

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1. A Writer is Born

From Muse to Bluestocking Birth of a Writer: Introduction Lieders (1858) Oh, I refuse to be bound by the rules of art! My thoughts run free, my imagination wanders, and my soul only finds satisfaction in ideas.My soul has never been ruled by the hope of glory, and never have I dreamed of having laurels grace my brow. My lips have only uttered songs of independence and freedom, even though while still in the cradle I might have been aware of the sound of the chains that would forever imprison me, because the shackles of slavery are the p...

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Close Encounters

«Nacín no Val do Mao, no concello do Incio, ao Sur de Lugo, e alí pasei os meus primeiros anos». [I was born in the Mao Valley, in the municipality of the Incio, south of Lugo, and I spent my first years there.]~ Marica Campo, writer.Readers might be interested in knowing the region cited by the author, so I’ll help a little:O Incio, municipality of the province of Lugo and a comarca or local region (English actually has no accurate term for a comarca). It has more or less one thousand five hundred inhabitants. Its size? Less than a hun...

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Haunted House

Haunt is a very interesting word. To be haunted is complex, a concept that can be interpreted in many ways. A haunt can be a noun, like a favorite place to hang out. Hant or haint is a vernacular form when it’s another noun, a synonym of ghost. Haunt as a verb is wobbly, going from very bad to seductive. If we are haunted by something or someone, it often gets sensual, and we begin to dream. Why, then, do ghosts, haunted houses, and the like mostly provoke shudders? Do we think the norm is associated with death (ours)? What are we afraid of?...

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Bats Deserve Better

Dear Bats, Who Deserve Better: I owe you an apology, and thought if I took time to write everything down, in a nice letter, you might believe I am being sincere and if at all possible, want to make amends. They say it’s never too late for that. Here goes - Way back when I was a little girl, I was scared to death of bats. They, I mean you, had two related characteristics that were the main reasons I trembled at the thought of meeting one. Bats were going to land on your neck and suck your blood (vampire style, of course). Or they would bite y...

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Do you see? (2/2)

From the journal or memoir of the one who buried the book and never saw it again Where does a brook keep its skeleton? I’m sure it has one. As I sit here, not nearly napping and with no Raven to perch above my chamber door, nor utter the fateful three-syllable word, I begin to understand. The language runs through me and around me and I consider pouring myself a small glass of Amontillado, except I have none, never had any, other than in a short story.  Note: Do you remember the house in Philadelphia where the man walled up his friend,...

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Do you hear…? (1/2)

My brook is like fine red winefrom Navarreit is the arterythat runs from a river I can't translateto the sea…In April the wine turns to goldand the burgundy shadows soundlike fish planning to spawnlike green seeds…It once ran reddrunken and wet, as ifrepeating it alluntil the end ~ KNM, Burgundy Brook ‘Just a minute’ said a voice in the weeds,so I stood stillin the day’s exquisite early morning lightand so I didn’t crush with my great feet any small or unusual thing just happening to pass bywhere I was passing by ~ Mary Oliver, Why I W...

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Lavinia Returns to Compostela (2/2) (L2.20)

Should I try to pick up the pieces?Tie up loose ends?Patch things up?Put the pieces of the puzzle together?Mend the broken pieces of something else that is not a puzzle at all?The questions rolled over her like frouma,like seafoam on the beach at the tiny town called Tal, near Esteiro. They insisted and their voices were that white noise she despised.On her first night back in the soft, stony bed, Lavinia knew she couldn’t sleep. It was something other than jet lag, however. It was all those questions, expanding and contracting, dashing her ...

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Lavinia Learns a Lesson (1/2) (L2.19)

The past is never the past. Who wrote that? Or not that but something else? And was the statement true? These questions and others kept running through Lavinia’s mind and were beginning to keep her up at night. She was waking up with dark circles under eyes and sometimes had to wipe away the last cobwebs, not of sleep but of nightmares. She knew she had to do something… It had all started, this sense of the unsettled, the uncertain, when Lavinia had what some call a crisis, although she just thought of as a moment of reckoning. True, it...

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