Short Fiction & Essays
By Leia E. Giddens
Pushing Forty
My little girl turns two this week, and 10 days after that I turn 37. I’m not sure why 37 is hurting my feelings, but it is. More than I remember any other age hurting. It’s not a milestone year. It’s one of those in-between, no-big-deal birthdays. Not sure why it’s rattling me so. Of…
Camping
There are people who choose to do this. More than once. I, too, was enticed by the rustic vision of communing with nature when a friend of ours suggested we all go camping out on family farm land to celebrate his birthday. It’ll be fun for the kids I thought. I looked to see what…
Cat Lady
I am not a “dog person”. In the South, that’s sort of like admitting you’re an alcoholic, an admission that something is inherently wrong with you. I just read another southern writer I love—Rick Bragg—who was writing about his dogs, actually has a whole book coming out about his current dog. With numerous southern dog…
Little Fat Men
A rather large ceramic reclining Buddha sits in the corner of my son’s bathroom. I think of this as an appropriate place, because sometimes I am naked in that room and Buddha makes me feel better as I look into the plate glass mirror at my own fat belly. Buddha sits there with a wide…
Driving West
forget where you’re goingand where it is you’ve beenoh my souloh this songnodding head and the tears i had for breakfastpiss awaydrift awaywoe be gone summer setswinter coldhold my handnow please nownow please now face of Godup aheadwe get old sometimesdriving west
On Dancing, Dying, and the Human Condition
Dancing is a special kind of freedom, a kind of madness. I used to meet up at the empty dance studio with a few dance friends and improvise in the dark room. No lights on. Just moving. When you care about how it looks, it’s performing. When you don’t, it’s therapy. When I teach, I…
A Cup of Kindness
For auld lang syne, my jo For auld lang syne We’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet For days of auld lang syne I’ve just spent the past hour trying to find the same kind of coffee cup my Papa used, which I have now learned is a 70s Corelle Old Town Blue pattern with…
Patience, Piss, and Corruption
Patience Easley walked almost sideways, her hip and knee and back holding on to a grinding ache. It helped when she could push the yellow janitor’s cart down the hallway to take some of the pressure off the lower joints. She had no medical leave, no retirement fund stashed away. She’d never had enough left…
A Dead End
When I was in college, sometimes the only private place I had to go was in my car. I drove all over Oklahoma City that first year, getting lost and finding my way back again. Sometimes, I even ventured out into neighboring towns, depending on the breadth of contemplation I was undergoing at the time.…
Desires of the Heart
Aunt Ruth wasn’t really an aunt at all, we just called her kin because she was more than kith to MawMaw. Her hair was fire engine red, and she always wore cat eye spectacles with a beaded chain that would hold them around her neck. She loved Jesus as any good country woman would and…
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