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

next to the JROTC certificates, all of it hidden because he had told me guns were for men and the talent I had been born with looked ridiculous when it lived inside a woman’s body. I thought about the hospital in the Mojave, the fractured ribs and the torn rotator cuff, and the text that arrived four days later suggesting that my injury was proof he continue reading …