Analysis of To Stare Death in the Face
Sometimes,
I think that The Storm brings calm.
Before it,
The clouds build and build in the sky
Until you can’t see the light anymore,
The clouds waiting and waiting to let go of the thousands
And thousands
Of pounds of rain.
You can’t always see when exactly the clouds will let go,
But you can feel it.
Ba-dump, ba-dump ba-dump.
The heart in your chest races.
Maybe if it beats faster,
Until you hear the pounding in your head,
You won’t be able to hear the voices
Telling you to make it stop.
It’s trying to keep going,
Making you feel like every beat is the last beat it will be able to do.
I had that feeling for 3 years.
The feeling of waiting,
And waiting,
For it to wash over me,
Like the hurricane that I knew was coming.
One day the weight of the rain finally,
Became too much for the cloud to hold.
I remember that day like it was yesterday.
At 10:11 I knew that the rain was coming.
By 10:50 I had contacted every single person I cared about,
Telling them how much they meant to me,
Some of which,
Writing back,
trying to stop The Storm from sweeping me away
For good.
That night, I got to meet Death.
He was welcoming at first.
What I didn’t know,
Was that Death,
Is a really good liar.
He said that letting the rain win would be easier than falling asleep,
That it wouldn’t hurt at all,
And I believed Him.
I waited and waited for it to hit me,
So I could become another number in a statistic.
But he lied.
My body woke up every hour after 4 am,
Coughing, throwing up, and hurting,
Trying to tell me that it wasn’t my time
To follow Death somewhere that is not on Earth,
And my mind realized,
At 2:18 pm,
The same thing that my body had realized 10 hours earlier.
I stared death in the face that day,
And 5 more days after that.
We sat in a room together,
Staring at each other,
Playing that game where whoever blinks first loses.
I laughed, and I cried,
Until I couldn’t cry anymore,
Doctors and psychiatrists helping me keep my eyes open,
And eventually,
Someone won.
Ever since that day,
I see Death from time to time when I’m completing normal tasks,
But now,
I don’t let The Storm take over me,
I am calm.
I know that everyone will die eventually,
That Death will win against all of us,
Eventually,
But for me,
I know that Death won’t take me anytime soon.
For me, the Calm was after the Storm
Scheme | Text too long |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 01 1110111 011 01101001 011110101 01100101111010 010 1111 1111101001111 11111 111111 0101110 1011110 0111010011 1111011010 1011111 1101110 10111100110111111011 1111011 010110 010 1111101 1010111110 1101101100 011110111 10101111110 111101110 1111010010101101 101111111 111 101 101101110101 11 1111111 1110011 1111 111 1010110 111100111110011001 111111 01011 11001011111 111010101000010 111 1101110010101 10101010 1011111111 1101111111 01110 111 011111011010100 11100111 011101 11001010 101110 101110101110 11011 0111101 100010010111110 001000 11 10111 111111111010101 11 111011101 111 111101101000 111101111 01000 111 1111111101 110111001 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 2,334 |
Words | 516 |
Sentences | 26 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 72 |
Lines Amount | 72 |
Letters per line (avg) | 25 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,777 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 448 |
About this poem
This poem is about my struggle with depression, comparing suicidal thoughts and feelings to a storm waiting to sweep away anything in sight.
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Written on February 07, 2022
Submitted by reagan.juhan on February 21, 2022
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 2:34 min read
- 3 Views
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"To Stare Death in the Face" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 13 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/120657/to-stare-death-in-the-face>.
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