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About Time is the national newspaper for Australian prisons and detention facilities

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Poetry

Beautiful Souls

By

RM

RM writes from a prison in QLD.

Kristel Hayes via Unsplash

Why should you suffer for my pain.

Knowledge in this I should try to gain.

Does it feel I have left you alone?

It may feel I have cut you to the bone,

But please believe me, my love is true,

I know in the past I didn’t know what to do,

Because being a father was new to me,

Over the years I was blind, but now I see,

That my responsibility is to be a dad,

Even me writing this poem, makes me sad,

Thinking of you all from this cell,

You beautiful things, I must have put you all through hell.

So now I have made some new goals,

And that is to save your beautiful souls.

Why should you suffer for my pain.

Knowledge in this I should try to gain.

Does it feel I have left you alone?

It may feel I have cut you to the bone,

But please believe me, my love is true,

I know in the past I didn’t know what to do,

Because being a father was new to me,

Over the years I was blind, but now I see,

That my responsibility is to be a dad,

Even me writing this poem, makes me sad,

Thinking of you all from this cell,

You beautiful things, I must have put you all through hell.

So now I have made some new goals,

And that is to save your beautiful souls.

This
piece
was originally printed in the
January 2026
edition of About Time.

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