“We took turns sitting beside my dad and holding his hand. On the TV in the living room, the Tour raced.”
father
‘There Are Things You See With Your Body’
“Stepping away, I feel something evaporate, a quantum of my soul, perhaps, burning up on contact.”
When No One Pulls the Trigger, the Gun Is to Blame
At The Trace, Casey Parks tells the story of a Mississippi father seeking justice after learning a faulty rifle is responsible for the death of his younger son.
His Only Living Boy
Roger Stringer, a father and gun owner in Mississippi, testifies against his older son, Zac, in the shooting that kills his younger son, Justin. Zac goes to prison, but eventually Roger learns that the rifle in the incident — a Remington Model 700 — is at fault.
Death Rattle: The Body’s Betrayals
Since my father’s death, I dream about descents and falls. How, without warning, gravity has you in its grip.
Death Rattle: The Body’s Betrayals
Since my father’s death, I dream about descents and falls. How, without warning, gravity has you in its grip.
Death Rattle: The Body’s Betrayals
In this moving lyric essay on grief, pain, and the body’s frailty, Ellen Wayland-Smith recalls, with heart-wrenching intimacy, how bodies have failed and fallen in her own life, and reflects on various literary and historical reckonings with the finality of death and the inevitability of the fall.