I’m sitting at the prison computer with tears running down my face, using this keyboard as an outlet to keep me from turning around and showing the men around me how badly it hurts to write my daughter. She sent me a bookmark with her second-grade school picture on it. She’s the perfect balance between her mother and me. She spent a long time picking out which picture she wanted to use and what she wanted to send to me. Now her face smiles at me over the top of a wonderful book I’m reading. It feels like she’s here with me. But she’s not, and that’s what hurts.

I haven’t been able to hug my daughter in almost two years. If it wasn’t for contraband cell phones in prison, I wouldn’t have even seen her face since then. Missing yet another year of trick-or-treating, Thanksgiving dinner, and Christmas excitement because I’m locked in prison. Missing the most precious years of my daughter’s life.

The War on Drugs only has victims, victims like my daughter.