To see the feather on the filthy mat beneath the gas pedal is infinite sadness. No more opposite a place for a feather to be, no worse way for it to get there than how it must have come, on the bottom of a shoe. I’d like to think it floated through a window like some answered prayer, but it’s winter and the windows haven’t been open in months. I keep holding my hands to the heater as if waiting for someone to throw me a ball I’m supposed to catch. When I see the steam rise from a cup of tea, I imagine the souls of the leaves have been released. No earthly reason to feel lonely for feathers, each bird having so many. One can go unmissed. And yet I think of my wife’s finches, how naked they looked when they hatched. They came out of their eggs and for weeks did nothing but open their mouths to the sky.