hts altogether, like a child’s thoughts, it also indicates her coming-of-age and realization of something she cannot change. Extended metaphors were also used in the poem, e.g. ‘onyx beads’, ‘onyx’ have a great significance but the poet didn’t specify what exactly. The poet also used simile to liken veins to small, fat snakes, a characteristic of a child. In the last paragraph, she repeated the words ‘helplessly’, whilst also comparing old, and young, in a paradoxical antithesis.
The first line of the poem, ‘I used to think that grown-up people chose’ implies the persona is that of an adolescent or a contemplative adult re-encountering thoughts she/he had as a child, and that as a child, the persona had assumed grown-ups strives in an idealistic world with the liberty and choice of deciding about anything that happens in their life-something that most adolescents and adults realize aren’t true. However, the persona wasn’t aware of that, implying the child is still blissfully naïve and ignorant of how the engine of life and society works. The phrase ‘used to’ also indicates a collapse of time, where there is a vague time setting. The persona was a child, and certainly doesn’t remember every episode, but he/she remembers how he/she felt back then, and tries desperately to retain that child-like pensiveness.
The poem then continues ‘To have stiff backs and wrinkles round their nose,’ Stiff backs, wrinkles and veins bulging out a...