I SCREAM in protest as my father pulls me towards the enclosure of feathered beasts. He laughs tenderly at the sight of me creeping around their pen, as if there were no wires to clip their flight.
A little later on, I shudder once more at the sight of a hatchling in his hands. One of his shirts hanging outside caught it by chance. He sees himself in the motherless fledgling, so he holds it like a newborn child. I felt almost envious.
My father kept the bird near him, swaddled in cloth, feeding it warm milk. It never grew feathers nor learned how to fly. His love was not enough to keep it alive.
And neither did mine.
In the morning, we flew with our bikes under the warm sun, his hints of leaving went unnoticed.
When the moon came, he slumped on my shoulder as I dragged him towards the car. He slipped from my arms, collapsing into the cold Earth.
Now, by the kitchen window, there is a bird that balances itself on the clothesline for hours on end. As my mother watches its claws cling to the cord, she believes it is my father keeping her company.
As I walk where he remains, I delude myself into thinking the same thing when a bird flies over my head. That thing with feathers weighs heavily on my heart, a burden that even Atlas, who carried the heavens, cannot comprehend.
It works until I realize I am no longer afraid — not of birds, but of him. So for a change, I pray.
If you can even hear me: God, do not turn my father into a bird. Do not let him die at the hands of a stranger and be left cold again, fatherless. Do not leash him in wired pens and let a child fear him.
If he returns, at least do not let him be in the form of something I fear. Do not let him come back to a life he had already lived.
I refuse to believe he is outside our window, all feathers, beak and claws.
My father is still the same way he left me—skin, teeth, bone and ashes. He remains in the shirt hung over the back of my chair, cradling the fledgeling who is still learning to fly. F
