My Father Called Me A Zero In Front Of Officers Until The Colonel Asked For My Call Sign

left standing in its absence was simply a father who had missed something enormous and was only now beginning to understand the size of what he had missed.

“Lucia, wait,” he said. “I need to understand. You should have told me.”

I thought about the Nike shoebox under my bed when I was sixteen, the blue ribbons from the shooting range tucked inside it continue reading …