No Gifts

No gifts or cards to buy now she's gone. Twice a year – birthday and Christmas – would be the frequency of thinking, choosing, purchasing, sending. She was a broken sparrow, shrunk from a woman. When I helped to bear the coffin to the catafalque, there was hardly weight at all. At home the cards, the gifts, are stored somewhere. He will find them when he can bring himself to look through her effects – gifts and cards, tiny things that were sent to a woman who became a sparrow.