When I was young, my father would call out from the bottom of the stairs.

“Are you up there?”

He always wanted to know we were safe.

He’s gone now.

Sometimes, at night, I look up at the sky and say, “Dad, are you up there?”

I know he is.

Susan Gale Wickes is a writer from Indiana. She enjoys writing short stories, greeting card verses, and the joy of cartoon captioning.