A Memorable Dinner
“I recognise that”, “that’s someone I know”, “I can’t place who, but that is someone’s smell”.
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!

“I recognise that”, “that’s someone I know”, “I can’t place who, but that is someone’s smell”.
I hated the kitchen on the outside but have learnt from being inside that it makes me feel wholesome and happy.
He awoke, annoyed, just able to make out his cellie in the blacked-out gloom. He began to protest, but his spirit soared when he heard the word: “Your library books are here!”
It was November 2025. I had zero dollars in my jail account. Mum sent me some Christmas dollars. I’d just started working and was earning $47.00 per week, plus $9.95 hygiene allowance.
Buy-Ups feed my belly, but what about my mind? Wth nothing on the telly, I might as well be blind.
The pain that I feel, this place that I’m in, these four walls closing in…
As this time comes to an end, I wonder which way the next will bend. The earth and moon will do their thing, I’ll embrace everything.
To all the prisoners who have ever spent time away from the ones they love.
A wee bit of heaven, drifted down from above. A handful of happiness, a heart full of love. The mystery of life, so sacred and sweet, the giver of joy, so deep and complete. Priceless and precious, so loveable, too – the world’s sweetest miracle, baby doll, is you!

Our faces are seen above uniforms of green, we parade in this prison, all shaven clean. "Another day in paradise", we sarcastically wink, "we fake it till we make it", we tell our shrink.

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.


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