WRITING PROMPT #3 of 30.

Today’s prompt is brought to you by the letters F-L-E-E-T-W-O-O-D M-A-C and a lyric from their song Gypsy. “I was a child, and the child was enough.”

So often we define ourselves by the things we lack. Make a list of 5 or more arenas in your life where you have told yourself (or the world has told you) that you are not enough.

Now, list 3-5 images per each example that illustrate that untruth. For example, my first untruth is “not thin enough.” Images for thin might be—ribs that poke through a ribcage, a gap between the thighs, a boy who can pick me up and spin me around. 

Write a letter/poem to a child. Subvert this culture of shame. Tell them all of the things they don’t need through images, i.e.:: “you don’t need a gap between your thighs. You don’t need a boy who can throw you around.”) Your only job in the world is to convince that child of this. 

If you haven’t figured it out by now, YOU are the child. And you are enough.

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Megan Falley is the author of two collections of poetry, After the Witch Hunt (2012) and Redhead & the Slaughter King (forthcoming in 2014), both published by Write Bloody Press. In honor of National Poetry Month, she will be posting a writing prompt per day over at her artist page.