The finest example of this is near the middle of the poem where Dove says, “[...] one leans against the door. / “Can you feel it yet?” they whisper. / I don't know what to say, again. They chuckle,” (Dove). In other words, the author is writing a conversation as if the audience is in the dark, they can hear what is going on, but they can not understand what is exactly happening. Dove creates tension between the characters in the poem with her use of syntactic breaking of dialogue this way, leaving the reader almost literally in the dark for the event taking place - and thus showing the blindness anyone has with the sexual violence experienced during a young girl's …show more content…
By combining the previous rhetorical devices, and somber vocabulary, the author manages to lay out a dangerous story for the audience. Dove writes, “I clutch at the ragged holes / They leave behind, here at the edge of darkness. / Night rests like a ball of fur on my tongue,” (Dove.) Writing the end of the poem, Dove takes careful consideration in writing actions taken by the character of the poem. She wants to leave the end unsettling and cryptic to show the feelings reflected in the woman she writes about. The author demonstrates the disorder and violence of the poem clearly with her use of words that have negative connotations. For instance, words such as “ragged,” “edge,” and “darkness” have obvious sinister overtones connected to them, but also the imagery of “ragged holes,” and “fur on my tongue” are meant to entice the reader to make knee-jerk reactions, similar to fingernails on a