Scalawag Magazine is hosting its third annual Abolition Week. This is re-posted from the Scalawag site today, a piece written by Jordan Gass-Poore called “I’ll Never Have Closure: What TV Gets Wrong About Having a Dad in Prison.”

I have 45 minutes to write this. 

If I don’t do it by then, I’ll chicken out and go back outside for another smoke. 

There’s this memory that keeps playing in my head that I’ve tried to suppress many times, but the more I try to block it out, the slower it gets. My dad is sitting next to me in the car. He’s yelling, not quite at me because his eyes are on the road and the bottle in his hand. I couldn’t even get his attention when he was mad at me. 

I’m 4 years old. I don’t know yet that the clear liquid in the bottle he’s drinking from is gin. I think it’s water. My dad drives the car magically; his hands aren’t on the steering wheel. One hand holds the bottle, the other hand rests outside the window, a cigarette between his fingers. 

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