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

of spent metal with no military utility remaining.

I kept it anyway.

Not as a trophy. Not as evidence to show anyone.

Just as the answer to a question my father had been asking since I was eighteen years old, asking it not with words but with every dismissal, every laugh, every instruction to sit down and stop embarrassing him.

He had asked whether I had continue reading …