The Viewing

By Lleyton Kane

He’s smaller than I expected. They always are. The stillness shrinks them. The room smells like lilies and furniture polish. His hands are folded wrong—left over right. He was right-handed. The small detail bothers me.

A woman touches my arm. “He talked about you constantly. His little girl.” I’m forty-six. I don’t correct her. More people arrive. A cousin I haven’t seen in decades. A neighbor from the old house. They say he loved his family. He’s at peace now. He was a good man.

A good man. I let it sit on my tongue deciding whether to swallow.

The funeral director approaches. “Would you like a moment alone?” I look at my father’s face. The folded hands. The lilies. The room full of people who knew the polished version of him. A small gnat has landed on his knuckle. Or I pretend it has. I lift my hand with a little laugh, the way daughters do, and flick. My nail catches the soft place at the base of his thumb—hard enough to have hurt.

“No,” I say. “I think we’ve had enough of those.”

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Lleyton Michael Kane is in the 12th grade at Mount de Sales Academy in Macon, Georgia. His short story, "Staring Beyond Kings and Gods" was awarded second place in the 2024, 11th Grade Division of the GISA State Creative Writing competition. His poetry has appeared in Howl Magazine (2025) and Journal of Necessary Fiction (2025). His short prose was published by Fiction Attic Press (2025). Most recently, his poem “The Right to Possible” was awarded 1st Prize in the 2025 Renee Duke Youth Poetry Award competition announced at the Human Rights Awards Event in Austin, TX on Sunday, Dec. 7, 2025, in celebration of the 77th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Kane is an autistic writer with a keen sense of restraint and aesthetic empathy. He lives with his family in Georgia in a house filled with paintings, dogs, and stories that unfold slowly.