Cookie

Part Two: Maintaining Innocence

Maintaining innocence in prison does not make you popular, and if it’s for a crime against a child, you are the lowest of the low.

What happens when Cookie is sent to prison for a crime she claims she did not commit?

Credits:

Produced and edited by Lizzie Norton, May Robson and Naima Sakande.

All the music featured in this episode is licensed by Audioblocks.

Our thanks to Jake Tyler who created our logo.

Part One

Part Three

Extras

Letter written to Cookie in prison by one of her children

Cookie in one of her homemade t-shirts

Every year, on the anniversary of Petee's death, Cookie put this notice up to the window of her prison cell asking not to be disturbed

All the letters, cards and drawings Cookie received from her children and family while she was in prison

One of the birthday cards Cookie would write to Petee to commemorate how old he would be had he grown up

Another of Cookie's original artworks

Cookie’s Poetry

TIME OF DAY

As the door is locked I sit on my bed surrounded by the silence of my room. I suddenly feel confined, yet relaxed and at peace. I sit there for about half an hour talking to my son, imaging him playing in the room, at the side of me, his toys scattered all over the floor. I hear his laughter. He’s running to the window and climbing to look out, watching cars that drive along the road outside. The birds start chirping and twittering. He is running around the room now, trying to fly, his arms flapping. Then, finally exhausted from play, he flaps over to me and settles, nestling beside me. Together we curl up, him snuggled on my lap, and in this bubble of bliss, we sleep.

UNTITLED

The blank page of my existence

has frantic writings scrawled across

panic driven and fear possessed

what did he see?

what did he feel?

did his enlightened innocence

allow him to know?

did he call out silently

for me?

I try in vain

to clear the page

for there are no answers

to the emerging questions

no means to clarify

the finality they seek

is far beyond my reach

and my phrenetic scrabblings

my quest for response

proves futile

and only aides

the painful reverberations

of the ultimate word-

why?

Cookie

Part Two: Maintaining Innocence

Extras

Cookie’s Poetry

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