😮 I removed the handcuffs from a prisoner and recognized the tattoo of my dead father. He died in Vietnam three months before I was born; I never knew him. 💔 And this 67-year-old man, accused of stealing medicine from a pharmacy, had the same military badge on his arm that my mother has had framed in the living room for forty-eight years.

me first. Maybe for no reason at all. In war, you don’t choose with reason, daughter. You choose with your hands.”

And then she uttered the phrase that broke me in two:

“Your father died ten minutes later. But before he died, he grabbed my vest and made me swear two things. That I would take care of Güero until his last day.” And that he was going to continue reading …