Imagine receiving your first criminal conviction

At five years old

Imagine a world where you are taken

By strangers

Imagine

 

Imagine now that you are alone

Imagine

Strange figures dressed in black

And white

Imagine

Being convicted

Of poverty

Imagine

Being sentenced

At five years old

 

Now imagine

You are taken

Away from your brothers

And sisters

By strangers

Dressed

In black and white

 

Imagine

You are a subordinate

An inmate

A fallen one

At five years old

 

Imagine

You have been abandoned

By your mother

A widow

So poor

She could not feed you

 

Can you imagine?

Imagine your childhood

Imagine you are not

The only one

But you are not permitted

To talk to your peers

The other inmates

The rejects

And the misfits

 

Imagine your world

Twenty one years

As an inmate

In a convent

Cold, dark corridors

Dormitories housing

Trauma and fear

 

Imagine being told

You are guilty

You are dirty

You are unworthy

 

Imagine

Your education

You will learn to scrub

The dirt off the cold

Hard floors

Your arms upto your elbows

Scrubbing habits and robes

 

At the end of the day

You’ll eat gruel

And pray

For the closing

Of the doors

 

Imagine

The day

When you are cast out

And the door closes firmly

For the last time

 

You find yourself

In a world

You know nothing about

Your whole life

Has been within

Those cold, hard

Walls

 

Now you are out

Rejected

Sentence served

You got no more than

You deserved

Imagine

 

What would you do?

When you discovered

How different

The world was

For you.

 

C.K.22

 

This is a true story. A reflection on my mother’s life, she was born in Ireland in 1946 and was sentenced to 16 years in a convent having lost her father to cancer. Her mother was destitute and pregnant with her 12th child. My mother and her 10 siblings were abandoned when my grandmother left them and came to England with her newborn child.