1. Read the poem 

  2. Do your own reflection on it, noting what it inspires in you

  3. Feel free to use your own reflection as your prompt or…

  4. Use the selection of prompts below the poem

  5. Pick one that inspires you and write (feel free to use only one or write several poems using different prompts) or…

  6. Don’t use any of the provided prompts and follow your inspiration from wherever it comes

Face To Face

From Grandmother’s Waverly farm,
I've inherited the antique mirror.
I witness: a flat chested girl
with my dimples, my curls.

She loathes her image, has cut
her arm, harbored more menacing
measures. In her dreams, she runs
from black wolves with bared teeth.

I tell her:
Before you do the dishes,
paint your nails cha-cha coral.
Buy toucan green socks.

I tell her :
Go to the movies at noon.
Play Mozart quartets.
Be a good mother to yourself.

I tell her:
Your children will swirl
in dreams without wolves.

Nancy Bailey Miller
(https://www.facebook.com/nancyspoetrycorner/)

Please join Writing From The Inside Out by attending the read-around sessions on Friday afternoons. It’s free, fun, a great way to share, and reading a poem is optional. If you have not registered, click the button below; and if you have registered, you do not need to register again, simply use the link sent to you in your confirmation email. Register Here:

Next Read Around is October 7, 2022 at 4:00 PM (PST)

My Thoughts

It may well be impossible to live a human life without trauma.  We are born helpless in the world, totally vulnerable, completely dependent on caretakers and providers. Not just for a short slog, but for many years before we gain our footing and are able to fend for ourselves. Even if we are blessed with loving parents and good circumstances, mistakes will be made and life will deliver its blows. At some point, we will have to face our own demons and rescue ourselves.

Nancy Bailey Miller’s poem, Face To Face, poignantly describes such a reckoning. The narrator spares us the details of the trauma(s). It is enough to know she looks back at a younger self once plagued with nightmares and enough self loathing to contemplate suicide. But now, looking through the antique mirror from the wisdom of years, she can offer the teenager she once was comforting guidance in simple acts that might bring a measure of joy into the mix. Sometimes, the most precious consolation from our reckoning is the parenting of ourselves and the knowing that we will not pass our nightmares onto our children or to those that come after us.

Prompt Menu

  1. Imagine you are looking into an antique mirror where you can see your younger self. Journal or write a poem about what you witness in the mirror.

  2. Journal or write a poem about nightmares that you had when you were young. Did you have recurring nightmares? How did the nightmares resolve?

  3. The idiom “wolves at the door” refers to a percieved danger or impending threat. Journal or write a poem about the wolves at your door. Are there wolves there now? What wolves were there at different times in your life? How do you deal with them (actually or metaphorically)?

  4. Journal or write a poem about a trauma that shaped or impacted your self-image. How did it change your sense of self. How has it changes since then?

  5. Pick a growth stage, like being a teenager, and write a poem or journal about how you thought of yourself at that time, how it impacted you, and how you came to terms with it.

  6. What did you do to escape the realities of life when you were young? For instance, I was an avid reader, escaping into books. Or consider some place you would go to hide away or get away from things. For instance, when I was young, my father built me a “fort,” a small lean to next to the house furnished with a cot and I got to sleep in it for a period.

  7. Write a series of suggestions to your younger self using the Miller’s repeated phrasing: “I tell him/her/them”

  8. Journal or write a poem to your younger self teaching him/her/them how to be a good parent (a good mother, a good father) to him/her/themself.

  9. As usual, write about anything else that inspires you from the poem or from life that