I Sat Quietly at My Father’s Veterans Ceremony Until a Uniformed Officer Ignored the Stage and Came Directly to Me

a small Virginia town involves a toll that no plan fully accounts for, which is the toll of walking back into the space where other people’s versions of you have been growing in your absence, tended and shaped and distributed by whoever found it convenient to tend them.

I stopped for coffee on Main Street because I needed something to do with my hands.continue reading …