Menu

Menu

Prompts

Contests

Stories

Blog

Directory

Contests

Magazine

FAQ

Kathleen March

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jan, 2020

Stories (394)

Comments

Library

1491 Followers

902 Following

394 Stories

7971 karma pts

?

Fear Not

She had spent so long, so many years, thinking about him. She was afraid to tell him, though. Not afraid of what he had written or might write; afraid of what he might do. No, that was wrong; she wasn’t afraid of what he might do. It was another reaction that she feared: it was what he wouldn’t do. To put it more clearly: she was scared that he would say nothing and would then just walk away, as if he hadn’t heard her or as if she didn’t matter. As long as she said nothing, she could hope. It was the classical situation where one decided to ...

3 likes

No Stars

It looked like an inviting place for supper. And it was still open, despite the rather late hour. There were several of us and we were ravenous, ready to devour anything edible. I grasped what looked like the handle of the door, not thinking much about it, with my rumbling stomach. It was original, I thought: it went across the whole rectangular opening and was flat and thin, with some words on it that I didn’t stop to read, obviously. There was a group of hungry bodies behind me.Once we were all inside, it started. Before it was over, I was...

5 likes

Camouflage

I’m not going to deny it: the first time he walked into the classroom I wanted to punch his lights out. No, that’s not really true. It’s only a figure of speech, because I don’t think anything could force me to hit someone in the face. Still, I knew instantly that I wasn’t going to like him, that already I didn’t like him. As a professor, that reaction to a student is unprofessional and can’t be justified, most people would say. I suppose I ought to explain.He didn’t have a chip on his shoulder and he hadn’t said a word yet, but I knew from ...

6 likes

The Code

I confess. I have some rather dark impulses. Since we're here in this little tavern or bar or mesón and there's nobody listening, I'd like to confess. You can decide whether I'm a menace to society or a hero. Please, I'd be grateful for your input, and even for your help. However, I hope you won't report me to anybody. My heart is in the right place. Let me order another coffee and I'll explain. What are you having? Another of the same? So... there are two things that really bother me. A lot. Let me explain and then I'd appreciate your adv...

6 likes

The Art of Travel

I met him at a book presentation in one of the larger bookstores of the city. I don't usually go to the big chain suppliers of books, but my friend Anastasia had invited me. She had just published her third cookbook and it looked like it would be the most successful. The first book had been called East Coast Cooking: From Maine to Maryland. The second one had been Celtic Fare, Then and Now. The third one, the one just out, had quickly made it to the top of the nonfiction titles and was Secret Ingredients, Secret Poisons.  Obviously t...

5 likes

Stay… just a little bit longer

Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay    ~ Robert Frost Frost felt right at this hour, on this day, in this place. He was that kind of poet: his lines simply popped into one’s head every so often. He had other poems like that, as did Carl Sandburg. Women poets of the same time were thinking about other things and the cadence of their verses wer...

7 likes

Letters from home

It’s hard to know where to start, hard to explain it all to other people when I’ve got such a good handle on the matter. A handle it took a long time to acquire, and time is key here. Nevertheless, I’ll do my best to tell the story, because I am painfully aware that I am the only one who can actually tell it and because it’s worth being told. ***** The box contains letters of the sort that no longer are written: in pencil, on something like air mail paper, sometimes ten pages in the most elegant cursive imaginable. If I had that penmansh...

7 likes

Cobbler

I have had just one dog in my long life: Tippy, a red cocker spaniel. Long is long, but I think the relevant point is that my dog entered my life when I was five and left it when I was twenty-six. By then I thought she was immortal. I won’t get into how things ended, but a truck on a snowy day in January was to blame, as were Tippy’s cataracts. Everybody has dog stories, so I won’t go into any detail, except to say that Tippy and I grew up together and really was a member of the family. She was well-behaved and spoke Human. I can still hea...

6 likes

Fredy

Volverán las oscuras golondrinas en tu balcón sus nidos a colgar, y otra vez con el ala a sus cristales jugando llamarán. · Pero aquellas que el vuelo refrenaban tu hermosura y mi dicha a contemplar, aquellas que aprendieron nuestros nombres... ésas... ¡no volverán! · Volverán las tupidas madreselvas de tu jardín las tapias a escalar, y otra vez a la tarde aún más hermosas sus flores se abrirán. · Pero aquellas cuajadas de rocío cuyas gotas mirábamos temblar y caer como lágrimas del día... ésas... ¡no volverán! · Volverán del amor en tus oíd...

6 likes

A Lifetime

She taught travel writing in a small college. It wasn’t a bad job and she got to choose what she taught, but the students were there to fulfill a requirement and some hoped to pick up some pointers for their next trip to Paris or Prague. The course wasn’t going to leave them any wiser about going on excursions to exotic places, but they figured it was easier than taking a foreign language. That was a lot of work and what if they decided to go to Copenhagen or Oslo instead of Venice? All those hours cramming Italian into the brain would go fo...

8 likes

Houdini is my Hero

There they’ve done it again. They’ve picked me up out of my normal life and put me back in the box. They think I belong in the box, in some sort of squarish space with four straight sides and a bottom, plus four flaps on top that may or may not provide me with a possibility of escaping.It’s possible that every one of us gets put in a box at some point in life, but it’s also possible that some of us spend a lot more time in one. That can be for different reasons. Some people accept the box and plod on, although their plodding is slow because ...

3 likes

Food for Thought

She was an extremely successful chef in an extremely successful restaurant on the coast of Maine. The midcoast, to be precise, although exact location is better off a secret. Once they hear about the great food, prices, and views, the tourists start to invade our state and they just come for the lobster, not the scenery or history. (We aren’t happy about that.) It had taken some time and effort for her to become head chef. She had gone through rigorous training in three countries. She was an expert at preparing seafood, as might be suppose...

5 likes

Bathrobes and Slippers

She didn’t know what a parable was for a long time. Then she learned. And waited…She was so anxious and lost. It felt like she knew where she was, but there were too many paths and pitfalls. Something could always go wrong, even when a person was trying to do the right thing.It might have had something to do with the old nightmare she kept having. The never ending nightmare whose meaning any Psych 101 student could figure out: fear of failure. Except. Except she had not been a failure, at least not what the nightmares were always about: Teac...

6 likes

Niar

‘Chove en Santiago, meu doce amor’ (Madrigal á cibdá de Santiago.) Federico García Lorca, Seis poemas galegos. The year the above line appeared in print was 1935, although Lorca had been to Santiago years earlier. Friends invited friends to the old city. Lovers invited lovers.  There were others. Visitors of a certain type were puzzled about where they could find the ‘place with all the face on the wall’. Puzzled as they walked in the opposite direction and because ‘the place with all the faces on the wall) was the Catedral de S...

4 likes

Justice, She Said

Write a story about someone seeking revenge for a past wrong, they said.  How can I do that, I said.  Yet they deserve it, I said then, after mulling the idea over for a bit.  Once I’d accepted the fact that revenge was justified, I began to think of how to write about how to carry it out and I started to look around for models to guide me. You see, I knew I would probably be committing a crime and might very well get caught. Still and all, I wanted my crime to be perfect. Please be advised that my own act of revenge mig...

5 likes