My Life

Somehow it got into my room.
I found it, and it was, naturally, trapped.
It was nothing more than a frightened animal.
Since than I raised it up.
I kept it for myself, kept it in my room,
kept it for its own good.
I named the animal, My Life.
I found food for it and fed it with my bare hands.
I let it into my bed, let it breathe in my sleep.
And the animal, in my love, my constant care,
grew up to be strong, and capable of many clever tricks.
One day, quite recently,
I was running my hand over the animal's side
and I came to understand
that it could very easily kill me.
I realized, further, that it would kill me.
This is why it exists, why I raised it.
Since then I have not known what to do.
I stopped feeding it,
only to find that its growth
has nothing to do with food.
I stopped cleaning it
and found that it cleans itself.
I stopped singing it to sleep
and found that it falls asleep faster without my song.
I don't know what to do.
I no longer make My Life do tricks.
I leave the animal alone
and, for now, it leaves me alone, too.
I have nothing to say, nothing to do.
Between My Life and me,
a silence is coming.
Together, we will not get through this.

There are many examples of figurative language in this poem. One example is apostrophe. This is used throughout the entire poem because although the animal is not present, it is being talked about. I believe the poem is a metaphor in itself. It sounds like he's raising an animal, but he's really talking about himself and how he took care of himself, but it turned out that it could all go wrong. The metaphor is pretty much the meaning of the poem.
The speaker of this poem is a person who has pretty much given up all hope in life. The author i using a description of taking care of an animal as taking care of himself. He starts off talking about how it was frightened, about how he was frightened, but he took care of himself. Recently, he realized that hecould very well kill himself. He stopped taking care of the animal (himself), but he stil stays strong and healthy. He does not know what to do with his life now.
The meaning of this poem is that he has taken care of himself all of his life and is now realizing that he will die. He has given up hope and doesn't feel that there is any reason to take care of himself anymore. He can't fight anymore, but he still keeps going. The way he describes taking care of an amnimal is a good way to show how someone take cares of oneself.