Who Understands Me but Me

In the list of deprivations, the first item the speaker names is water: “They turn the water off, so I live without water” (Line 1). If a reader interprets this literally, it signals how dehumanizing the system is. Water is essential to life. Next to air, it is the most important component a person needs to stay alive. To turn the water off means to slowly kill a person. The guards also turn the showers off, and so he will need to “live with [his] smell” (Line 13). Depriving a person of water dehumanizes, while it also dehydrates. Yet the speaker says he can “live without water” (Line 1), which emphasizes his own enduring spirit. A person who can survive without water shows the strength of will to survive despite dehumanizing and potentially fatal conditions.

The speaker later notes that he “followed the blood-spotted path, / deeper into dangerous regions, and found so many parts of myself, / who taught me water is not everything” (Lines 31-33). The speaker does not specify what he found, but by implying it is more important than water, he conveys the message that it is a greater source of nourishment. Water sustains the body, but there is something more important than the body, which implies the spirit and its nourishment.