Read the excerpt from Making a Fist by Naomi Shihab Nye.For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,I felt the life sliding out of me, a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.

The speaker compares their fading life to a drum in the desert that becomes harder and harder to hear. The image focuses on the drum’s beating growing faint, which suggests the speaker’s heartbeat and life weakening. So the image mirrors the beating of a drum.

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