Debut Flash: 'Coyote Smile' by Christy Tending

Mine is the father who has gifted me far more pocket knives in this lifetime than dolls.

The one who brags to anyone who will listen that I’m a prettier skier than he is. That, faced with a cliff, I’m effortless. Perhaps the only time he’s called me pretty, because in his mind, what difference would my prettiness have made in the world? Or in his? None at all, of course. He preferred the tough daughter. So I became, to my own amazement and delight, the “rub some dirt on it” daughter, the “take no shit” daughter, the “never surrender” daughter.

This is who I imagine myself to be. If he is Zeus, I am his Artemis, made holy by my wildness: the coyote who grins as it trots along the side of the road.