“It” is a poem of confrontation and surrender. A swimmer meets a shadow in the water — fear personified — and must choose between fighting, fleeing, or giving in. In surrender, she is lifted, not drowned, and the poem ends with a startling unity: the self and the shadow fused, terror transformed into transcendence.

It

My morning swim wreaked havoc

on every cell of my sleepy skin.

As the silver water lapped around me

the black night faded

with a hungry sun,

and together we took the day for ourselves.

Me, the light and the sea.

It begins,

as many things do,

with a shadow.

I held my movements

treading water with the stealth of a crocodile.

Waiting, watching.

I know it is there, under the water.

It is coming closer

feeding off the deafening beat of my heart as it ripples the mercury surface.

There was a sound I had not heard before.

Baby cries and angel wings echoed in a ravine.

And I listened hard

in an ominous wait for what was next.

The shadow rises, wraps itself around my torso

and tries to pull me down.

A rampant seaweed with a killer motive

Strong like father,

Invisible.

I remembered the shark warnings

Play dead

Eyes closed and limp

dreading the outcome

I sank into the power of the beast

as it thrust me up out of the water

into the sun like an offering of life

on a jet of black oil.

And suddenly I was gone,

It and I were one

Reflection

“It” stages a dawn rite: a swimmer enters silver water and meets a shadow that is fear, memory, and myth at once. The seaweed becomes serpent, shark, father, fate—an unseen force that first drags and then lifts, transforming panic into offering. The poem moves from vigilance to surrender, and in that surrender, difference dissolves: self joins element. What begins as menace ends as metamorphosis—terror alchemised into belonging.

🌊 Creative Analysis of It

Ritual of Awakening:
The poem opens in a liminal moment — dawn, when the world is shifting from night to day. The morning swim is almost baptismal: it “wreaks havoc on every cell,” jolting the speaker awake, stripping away numbness. This is not a gentle entry into the day but a confrontation with life itself.

The Shadow & The Self:
Then comes It — the shadow, the lurking presence beneath the water. At first it is ominous, predatory: the speaker treads “with the stealth of a crocodile,” hyperaware, as if in combat or pursuit. The shadow feels both external and internal — a force in the sea but also in the psyche.

This duality is reinforced by its transformation:

First a threat (“tries to pull me down”),
Then an intimate force (“wraps itself around my torso”),
Finally a deliverer (“thrust me up out of the water into the sun”).

Father & Fear:
The line “Strong like father” gives It a familial, almost mythic weight. The father-shadow is a primal power — perhaps memory, perhaps authority — that can destroy or protect. The speaker’s act of playing dead recalls survival instincts learned young, a child’s submission to overwhelming power.

The Turning Point:
Where most fear-poems end with drowning or escape, It offers a startling transcendence: the shadow lifts, not drowns, the speaker. What threatened annihilation becomes a conduit of rebirth — a dark force that delivers her to the light, “like an offering of life.”

This is the poem’s alchemy: fear and danger become initiation. The ocean is no longer something to survive, but something to merge with.

The Final Line:
“And suddenly I was gone, / It and I were one”
is the culmination — not just relief, but union. The self dissolves into the elemental, into whatever It is: ocean, shadow, trauma, salvation. It’s terrifying and ecstatic at once — a poem of surrender that becomes transcendence.

🔑 Themes

Fear as a gateway — not something to escape, but something to integrate.
Nature as initiation — the sea as a threshold between death and rebirth.
Masculine force and reconciliation — the shadow “like father” is both dangerous and protective, suggesting complex emotional inheritance.
Mystical union — ego death, oneness with nature, a merging of shadow and self.