Twelve
Brian Goldman

It was a Saturday and my father was bent over from the waist

calling for a wrench. I handed him pliers. He called me an Idiot

and threw them on the driveway next to the other wrong tools I had given him.

He knelt down when I handed him the wrench,

and I was burning and stupid beside him on the concrete.

I stood there staring at the back of his head while he worked as

all the curse words appeared out of the air

and gathered into a tiny circle where his neck and skull came together.

I could see his head flying forward,

his spirit shooting forth out of his eyes

and flying ghost-like into a vast nothingness of an afterlife.

Then the blood in my body would dry and harden under the summer sun

leaving me standing like concrete; hard and huge above my fallen father.