Katherine's Coffeehouse

Freedom means choosing your light, picking which part of the day means most, rising with mourning doves and dew, or celebrating the moon’s evolution.   What becomes of the sunrise, you writers already know: Daytime. Clockwork. Clouds and showers, temperatures based on the Earth’s hot moods.   Evening feels so much smoother, starlight beaming you […]

Today, the hate of the world weighs heavy, and I must remain a poet,

Saturdays were errand days, shopping and banking,

By Katherine Gotthardt   Often now, I think about death, usually at 3 a.m. when I wake to the thin skin of all that separates us. They say that’s when the dead speak, spirits and the living reside in one world, and anyone you miss is a but a pinpoint’s distance to your fingertips.   […]

By Katherine Gotthardt   Mornings, I want to write deeply, delve into the beak of the cardinal by my window, pull his routine song into my poem, make something more beautiful than myself. But it doesn’t happen.   Instead, the day gets swallowed, sits in a full belly where hours and years swell into reminders […]

Somewhere here, we’ve got the trophy, proof we’re not “one of them.”

Based on the #vss365 writing prompt "waxwork"

Sixteen months in, well, I still work from my basement,

We women of certain age have seen some things. But we don’t always tell. We tuck lessons learned into our bra and hold them safe til we need them again. Adjust the straps when it gets too tight. Don’t tell us how to start something. Or how to get it done. Don’t tell us we […]

I wrote this piece the day after the attack on the Capitol. May we always overcome, and may we never forget the fragility of peace.