My father went to prison when I was only a few months old. He and my mother were married. She was 22 years old, and he was two weeks from 21. His crime and subsequent incarceration devastated her. She discovered she was pregnant with my brother after my father was already gone. She didn’t talk about him much. No one did, except to say how much I looked like him. My Uncle Clarence, my father’s closest brother, would just stare at me. Sometimes I caught him. “You gotta excuse me,” he’d smile. “You look just like my brother, but smaller and with pigtails.” Then he’d hug me, and we’d laugh. I always wished he’d say more about his beloved brother, my absent father, but he rarely did… More at Refinery29.

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