DROWN by Nabusya Sikana

Gasping, Grasping
Fighting for air
Silence, Suspense
Bathing in my despair

I’m engulfed
By the water
By the strong sudden urge
To see my daughter

One last time

I open my eyes
One last time
I see her eyes

I give in
I sink to the bottom
But I feel light
Like the leaves that fall in autumn

Not gasping, Not grasping

Not even pleading
Tranquil as the ocean that swallowed him
Until his heart stopped beating

Rationale

I chose drowning as the theme for this poem because it’s something that I relate
closely to. When I was young, I nearly drowned in a sea and it’s a memory that I've
had to live with for my whole life though it has started to fade. I wrote this poem to
share my scary experience with others and give them a clue as to what it feels like to
drown.
The first four stanzas of the poem are written through the perspective of a man who’s
drowning in the ocean with no one to help him and in stanza two, the audience learns
that he has a daughter. The last stanza, however, is written through the perspective of
someone else who we know nothing about. This speaker is not necessarily a person
that was present at the scene of the drowning but more of a narrator who’s “all
knowing” so to speak.
The poem is not targeted at a specific group of people but rather at anyone who is
willing to read or listen to it. Anyone who is ready to turn on their imagination and
dive into the poem.
“Drown” is a free verse poem where the lines have no regular length. However, there
is a rhyme scheme for each of the stanzas; ABCB. This rhyme scheme repeats
throughout the poem.
I used a simile in stanza four, lines 14-16 to compare the feeling of sinking but being
light to the leaves that fall in the autumn season. This gives the audience an idea of the
feeling of drowning which relates back to my purpose.
Additionally, I used personification in stanza five, line 19 when it says “tranquil as the
ocean that swallowed him”. The ocean has been given the human quality of
swallowing. This makes the audience feel sympathy for the character whose been put
in this awful situation.