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Inspiration

When I wrote Face Me, I wrote it with an intended dual narrative.

A story from my past, trying to stand up against bullies, abusers, and oppressors. And that even when I was beaten down, I would never give in. A declaration, just like Stand, that I would not just stand down because my body is broken, even re-using some of the imagery from there. The statements made are, in this case, metaphors for what I went through. I didn’t literally die multiple times, but I died a little every time. Every time a person is beaten to the floor, bruised and bleeding, a little part of you dies. I will smile at my abusers, in the face of danger, and remain fearless.

The second narrative is a story of this mythic Queen of battle, Queen of Fear, even more mythologized than she was in previous poems. This version of the narrative is meant to be literal, not metaphorical, a story of a powerful Queen, to best explain this side of myself in a metaphorical sense.

Retrospection

Then, some days after having written it, I realized a third narrative. After years in which Queen had seemed dormant, Face Me could also be read as Queen herself refusing to remain forgotten, and addressing me as her “opponent”. While Queen, in the literal sense, is just some gathering of personality traits that I associate with this or that, I also personified different sides of me through Who Is That?. So in this narrative, I’m saying this side of my personality is metaphorically awakening inside of me, declaring, once again, that she is never-ending.

And when I realized that, when those things clicked in my head, it was like a world of possibility opened for me, and I have started to discover how to be more like myself once more.