WHERE THEY HIDE

Kelli Short Borges

Your Pop says you’re a desert girl and there’s a photo to prove it, you—tiny, frozen in time in the Arizona heat, cotton-white pigtails, a miniature Stetson and doll-sized chaps your parents chose when you were just two and wanted to be a cowgirl and in the photo your hands rest on your hips, elbows splayed—claiming room—chin tipped toward the azure sky like you think you’re a badass like you think you’re special and Pop says you're the cutest little gunslinger in a town full of rattlesnakes, and a girl’s always gotta look out for them D-backs he says, even though you’re a cowgirl—and a tough one at that—them snakes like the cute ones best he winks and he taught you good, taught you where they hide, so you know one or more might be lying in wait coiled under the sagebrush or under the spindly needles of a prickly pear with its blood-colored fruit just waiting for the meat of a girl’s ankle, just waiting to strike, to inject their venom, to bring you down, and there were rules for girls, even cowgirls like you—never go out alone, never on a night when the greasy scent of creosote hangs heavy in the air and the coyotes howl and he’s warning you for your own good he says, he’s met a snake or two in his time, and he knows their tricks, knows he can keep you safe, says home’s the safest place, but he didn’t tell you sometimes there’s no rattle, sometimes they coil slither strike right there in your yard, that you will never see them coming, their scales blending in with so much dirt.

Kelli Short Borges writes essays, short stories, and flash fiction from her home in Phoenix, Arizona. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Gone Lawn, The Tahoma Literary Review, The Citron Review, Cleaver Magazine, MoonPark Review, Ghost Parachute, multiple anthologies, and elsewhere. Kelli is a 2024 Best of the Net and 2023 Best Microfiction nominee. Often, you can find her at her favorite local bookstore, where she gobbles up lemon cake and books in equal measure. She is currently working on her first novel.