To Whom It May Concern:

Today’s prompt comes from a workshop I took last month with my favorite poet, Andrea Gibson. I started the poem at that time, but it went nowhere, so I left it alone. This morning, while sitting in the hallway as a bathroom monitor during our 4th graders’ STAAR test, I finished it.

The (simplified) prompt: Write a character witness letter for someone who has hurt or wronged you in some way. (Naturally, I chose myself.)

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To whom it may concern:

Miss Howard is a fine, upstanding citizen
Okay, maybe “upstanding” is pushing it…
But fine? Yeah, she’s fine.
That is to say, she’s okay.
She’s not the best, but I guess
she’ll do.

Wait, no, that’s not what I meant.
That’s not the point.
Maybe I’m not the best girl for this job.
I mean, I don’t have a lot to say about me
that will convince you I am
worth your time.

But I’ll try. I’m the queen of
“I don’t know, but I’ll give it a shot.”
And I don’t give up easily, because I know
I’ll probably get it wrong the first time.
I know this, and I think maybe
it’s okay.

So let’s start again, shall we?
Miss Howard is extraordinarily gifted
in the art of holding it together
when everything’s falling apart.
Like I said earlier, she’s fine –
always fine.

And when you ask her to jump, she’ll ask,
“How high, how many times, until you say stop?
One leg or two, where should I land, how should I look?”
If you want something done right
she’s the girl you want, but it comes
at a precious cost.

She’ll painstakingly ache over the smallest mistake
and she’ll need your reassurance that
practically perfect in every way
is good enough, and that good enough
isn’t a flaw, it isn’t failure, it really is
good enough

It will be hard for her to hear the words
“Good enough” without a bold, red NOT in front of it,
and when she hears this, she’ll feel the knot
in her stomach, because NOT is her default,
her factory setting, and she can’t
be restored.

But full restoration is the goal, see, and she’s well
on her way. If you’ve ever wondered
what a woman restored looks like, here she is:
Tear-stained, wonder-filled eyes, and broken pieces
glued together with gold and grace, and a heart
made of mercy.

And mercy is her gift, the place she shines –
in showing mercy, she’s learned she, too, deserves
to be found by grace, to be loved in awe,
to be seen – no, gazed upon – with wide-eyed wonder.
She, too, deserves to know that’s a complete sentence:
She deserves.

She deserves the light that finds its way into her window
and the new morning and mercy it brings.
She deserves the life that fights its way into her existence,
because living is so much more than being alive.
And she deserves to laugh – wildly, unrestrained,
fully free.

Freedom isn’t a flavor she’s tasted much of;
she’s certainly never held it or lived it, never felt
freedom ringing in her ears. She can’t hear it
for the critic inside whispers sweet, sorrowful nothings…
Nothing you do is right, nothing you are is okay,
nothing, nothing…

So, when I tell you she’s fine, what I hope you hear is,
She’s strong. She’s tough. But oh, does she need some grace.
Oh, does she need a break. She needs someone to take
Her hand and walk her to the other side, where healing lives.
She can manage on her own, but she needs a reminder that
she doesn’t have to.

When I tell you she’s fine, what I hope you hear is,
She’s beautifully brilliant, not perfect, broken in all the right places.
She cries too much and she feels too much and fears too much,
but she also loves too much and cares too much and
fights the lies and shines the light and refuses
to give up.

So, to whom it may concern:
Miss Howard is a fine, upstanding citizen,
deserving of the light of a thousand suns
and the wonder of a million shooting stars.
But most of all, she deserves everything.
She deserves everything.