A somber April breeze lifted the damp hair at his temples and ruffled the hem of my tattered blanket, as the bus jolted over the pothole-strewn prison road and finally arrived at the correctional institution, where A.R., my child, was to meet his incarcerated father for the first time in 7 years. My stomach fluttering and my hands quivering conspicuously more than A.R., I began to question the fervor that led me here, into this desolate facility housing prisoners who, as the prison guard describes, “committed the worst felonies possible, from murder to trafficking to everything in between”. My eyes honed on the horde of men in dark uniforms parading back and forth, impatiently, as they took turns peering through the sole window in the once vacant room. The door separating my child and his father stood approximately nine feet high, a brooding, grey mass of steel beams and mesh. There was no beauty in the design-rather it was bleak and uninviting.…