This section publishes creative contributions mostly from currently and formerly incarcerated people. It includes short-stories, poetry, creative nonfiction, art, and much more.
If you have something creative to submit to us, we would love to read it, or see it, and publish it in About Time – please write to us!
After all his team had been through to get here, physically and mentally, the farm boys were disrespecting them big time. “Only one way to shut their gobs,” he thought with venom.
When the light returns and the long night fades, and dawn slips soft through shadowed shades, you feel the hush before the day – a whisper of grace that finds its way.
They expect us to play ball, but always move the goalposts. They expect us to hold boundaries, the same they overstep. They want us to abide, but break their own rules.
Christmas day without my family, was such a terrible burden to bare, no Christmas tree, decorations, no presents, no laughter, no joy, no Christmas fare.
Every feeling they felt, the other feels too, trust is a must and communication too. Together as one, soulmates we are destined, forever to each other we are.
Outside these prison walls exists real life, going daily about their business in haste. The hustle and bustle, too busy to stop, lives synchronised, and no time to waste.
Oh how I can’t stand these nights alone, wishing that I could just go home. Never thought this is where I’d be, constantly dreaming of being free.
I’ve tried to write poetry, but I find it hard to do, I’d like to say in pretty words, just what I think of you. And what I would like to say, would be something like this: you make my heart run wild, with just one little kiss.
Beyond the bars, I sit and think about the past. Beyond the bars, I wait and watch the time pass. Beyond the bars, I barely ever see the stars. Beyond the bars, I’m alone in the dark.
You were never there to tuck me into bed. No, you were never there at night when I was scared. Mama, where were you when I needed you most. Mama tell me why all alone I had to cope.
Freedom has been likened to a bird, a plane, a song, it has been once personified as a road that’s very long. Freedom has been likened to people: from war, death, or insanity, to others it is being absolved from rules for eternity.
The two men popped open the Tesla's doors, thump thomp, and stepped out into a blooming orchard. The air was a herbal tea. Honey bees bobbed between the peach pink flowers.
If I could dress it up and say I never felt better, that I’ve got a girl at home and I’m waiting for a letter. I’d pretend the kids are fine and doing well at school, and when I phone they say they miss me and they think their daddy’s cool.
No matter what our pasts may say, what hurts, our pains endured, and tears shed for those who walked away. You and I, need not let ourselves be defined by those hurts from our pasts and no longer will it influence our time.
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Help us get About Time off the ground. All donations are tax deductible and will be vital in providing an essential resource for people in prison and their loved ones.
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