My Eight Year Old Son Was Teased for His Duct Taped Sneakers Then the Principal Called Me One Morning

and the slow narrowing of options. He knew from the beginning what he was for, and he was exactly that for every year I knew him, and I think that certainty of purpose was the thing I loved most about him, the way it made the air around him feel steady even when nothing else was.

The night of the fire, the call came in around eleven. A house on Carver continue reading …