By Isaiah Sasser

When the last goldfinch of the fall left the bird feeder, it took my father’s soul with it, hopefully to somewhere with better weather. 

The neighbors say my father never had a soul, but they never really knew him. It takes a lot of soul to be as bitter as he was. Last fall, I asked him to read me poetry with his basso voice, and he tried to read me “anyone lived in a pretty how town” and choked on his words over the line “she laughed his joy she cried his grief” and put the book away because he couldn’t see through his watering eyes. He looked for relief in the weary trudge of his mill job, but that was just a band-aid that had to come off every night and let him bleed by her picture on the nightstand.

The neighbors say my father never had a soul, but they never really knew him.

Dad used to bring sunflowers to her grave because she liked how bold they were and how their golden faces followed the sun as it rolled around the sky. Now only husks remain, husks and new moss growing on her stone. Before he joined her, he hadn’t visited for a while, not after the time he went last January for her birthday. He wouldn’t leave the side of her grave until he got frostbite on his hand and it had blisters for a week. I had to drag him to the car and drive him to the ER, and I think I would have lost him if he didn’t let my calls go to voicemail. He would’ve gone back the next day except he knew that if he let himself go, it would only really kill me. 

I got the call in November from the only neighbor who cared about him enough to notice his passing, and I returned the prodigal, without the fatted calf. Like the goldfinches, fickle in their search for food, I had left in search of a future. Unlike the birds, I neglected the hand that nurtured me and let it wither. 

Like the goldfinches, fickle in their search for food, I had left in search of a future. Unlike the birds, I neglected the hand that nurtured me and let it wither.

For months now, he’s lain buried, joined with Mom in their final matrimony of worms and wooden prisons. The goldfinches are back from their pilgrimage and perch on the trees with new leaves. They bear witness as I stand at the twin stones like I have every week since they stuck him in the ground. I rest supermarket flowers on the graves and look away because I don’t want Dad to see me cry. Men don’t cry, he taught me. He never cried, but his eyes watered sometimes.

Isaiah Sasser is a freshman intending to major in English.