I watched my father throw my clothes, my books, and the last photo of my mother into the fire like my life meant nothing. Then he looked at me and said, “This is what happens when you disobey me.”

He didn’t shout at fiI was nineteen the night my father decided to erase me.

rst. He didn’t need to. He moved through the house with a kind of quiet certainty, dragging everything that belonged to me out into the backyard as if he had been waiting for permission to do it his entire life.