In only sec­onds, what­ev­er grace I had expe­ri­enced unfair­ly or not as his only son, lay razed by Stetsons. What I wouldn’t have giv­en to stop myself from the embar­rass­ment of walk­ing away from my her­itage, as inef­fec­tive as it was. But dad woke up again, for a few days at least, and returned to his demand­ing ways. ~Martin Perez is a Mexican-American MFA stu­dent at Vermont College of Fine Arts and a pre­vi­ous Writing Fellow at St. Mary’s College of California’s MFA pro­gram, focused on cre­ative non­fic­tion. He has a BA in cre­ative writ­ing from the University of Arizona and grad­u­at­ed sum­ma cum laude.