My Father Said I Was An Accident At A Family Barbecue Until I Responded

had never owned. He looked smaller than I had ever seen him. Not pitiable. Just accurately sized, the way things look when the false inflation of thirty years finally runs out of air.

I walked out through the side gate. Carol and Jake followed. Behind me, thirty-one people sat with their paper plates and their sparklers and the ruins of a story they continue reading …