I avoid Father’s Day.

People ask me what I’m getting him. I laugh. I’ll figure something out.

Maybe I should. Maybe I’d be the bigger man.

But that word, father, slams in my ears, a fragile door.

Giving him anything’s pointless.

He’d just say it’s cheap, flimsy, another door slammed.

Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA fiction program. His stories, “Soon,” “How To Be A Good Episcopalian,” “Tales From A Communion Line,” and “Community Time,” have been nominated for Pushcarts. Yash’s work has been published in SmokeLong Quarterly, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Write City Magazine, and Ariel Chart, among others.