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The hybrid flash memoir Scrap: Salvaging a Family explores the stain of childhood fear and anxiety on the adult spirit and the experience of reconciling with an aging or dying parent. A daughter has grown up in a household with an angry and abusive father. He keeps the secret of his biological father’s identity from his daughter for decades. When the elderly man faces his mortality, he finally names his father. The more the daughter learns about her father’s early life and origins, the more she understands him, which leads to forgiveness for the past.

Samples

Scrap

A scrappy boy fuses
himself a father out of wants
Out of the gritty street pavement
Out of throwing away the hurt
Out of fighting and scraping
punching cracks and potholes
Scrapyard salvage appeals to him
Each scrap reveals a system
Steel gears, bolts, and bushings
rake heads, trowels, posts
wire aluminum and copper, tin
everything, brass hinges, fittings
he rearranges and solders into
magical monstrosities

My father was scraps of before
initials instead of names
his father before him scraps
of place and name, the secret
middle name shared under
its double-locked hiding place
What do I do with a sack of bits
his mother’s scissors left behind?
Love’s been stitched into me
by her threaded tongue
By the snips and wisp
The junk or trash, recyclable
material, remnants, fragments
Puzzle pieces awaiting home

(originally published in Anti-Heroin Chic)

~~

I wouldn’t be here if my father hadn’t sent me in his place. Under the insistent fluorescents and amid the smell of machine grease, a small forklift truck operates to the left, and ahead of me, a couple of men in overalls finger the cigarette packs in their pockets as they chat. At the window, a man in a dirty welder’s cap looks up from his clipboard. I explain that I have come to look at scrap metal. Small things, cast-offs. Junk yard trash. This isn’t my kind of place. I like silk blouses and almond orchards in full bloom. The man motions for me to follow him. Scrap has been sorted into trash bins by type. He points. This here’s small gears, then the medium gears in here, and the large gears next to that. After sifting through the gears, I notice the faucet handles, with their lacy patterns, arranged by size. Then various pieces of tubing and joints, hinges and brackets, bolts, screws, rivets, valves, bushings, wire by thickness, and small pieces of sheet metal, all arranged by metal type. Aluminum, stainless steel, steel, yellow brass, red brass, iron, cast iron, tin, copper, and insulated copper. The patterns created by someone sorting them by likeness electrify me with a shiver. I’m inexplicably touched by the riches. Dad can use these heart-shaped brackets. The metal fan blades will work as petals for one of his flower sculptures. I grab a shopping cart and begin to fill it.

(originally published in River Teeth)

Purchase Link

Scrap: Salvaging a Family will be published by ELJ Editions in March 2026. Pre-order now!

Scrap: Salvaging a Family