Joanna’s headstone is only weeks old but already weatherworn.
I kneel to brush cobwebs from the engraved letters: Our Beloved Daughter.
A bird alights on a naked branch above my head, warbling.
A goldfinch… Joanna’s favorite bird.
‘Goldfinches sing the sweetest songs,’ she’d always say.
It stares at me and chirps.
“Joanna..?” I murmur.
I see her face.
Smell her hair.
My lip bleeds between clenched teeth.
No. She is gone. Forever gone.
I grab a stone and hurl it at the imposter.
Feathers burst in an explosion of yellow and black and the goldfinch falls dead onto Joanna’s grave.
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