Resilience

by Patty Prewitt

The robe hangs from me
like a dark green river
that has traveled
through iron gates,
through winters of counting,
through the long vocabulary of restriction.

And now—

see how the old cathedral light
cannot help itself.
It pours over my shoulders
as if the morning itself
had been waiting
for this walk.

Seventy-six years old
and still the heart
opening like a wildflower
through a crack in stone.

Who told us
that life blooms only once?
Who decided
the soul cannot begin again
after ruin?

I step forward carefully,
not because I am weak,
but because I know
what it costs
to arrive anywhere beautiful.

The young students glance at me
and perhaps they see resilience.
But resilience is too small a word.

I am more like the oak tree
that lightning split decades ago
yet each spring
insists on leaves.

More like the river
that prisons tried to name and contain,
yet still found its way
to open water.

And listen—
the silent organ rising in the chapel,
the old stones holding their breath,
the tassel brushing my cheek
like the hand of time itself saying:

Yes.
Even now.
Especially now.

My diploma is not paper.

It is a door swinging wide
in the middle of my life.

It is every book read under fluorescent light,
every lonely night survived,
every stubborn hope
protected like a candle in wind.

I walk saucily down the aisle,
smiling as though astonishment
has finally become a form of prayer.

And the world,
which has taken so much from me,
must now make room

for the woman
who came back alive.

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Patty Prewitt spent nearly 40 years incarcerated for a crime she did not commit. She was released in December 2024 and has published two memoirs and a children’s book. She lives near Kansas City and advocates for prisoners’ rights. Her story “Killing Me” appeared in our Winter 2025 Issue on Incarceration & Family. Linktree https://linktr.ee/pattyprewitt