'Aimee Nezhukupatathil's Mosquitoes'

Have you ever wondered what life without your dad would be like? Probably not great for a snob. Parents are those who raise kids, mentor them, and shape them into good people. One thing that we don’t realize is that childhood isn’t that long. Think about it, if you leave the house when you're eighteen years old and live to be 80, you spend just under a quarter of your lifetime living with your parents. Eighteen years can fly by in the blink of an eye, so we all should make the most of our parents' ever-lasting love. In her poem, “Mosquitoes,” Aimee Nezhukumatatathil justly argues that cherishing time with your family is very important before you realize it doesn’t last forever. It is the cycle of life, people grow up, move out, and eventually
She starts by using visual imagery to describe the girl, “all I wanted to do was to go inside our cooled house and watch TV or paint my nails”. This paints a picture in the reader's mind that the girl is not much of an outdoorsy person, and would rather be inside doing regular teenage girl activities. She follows up by saying, “What does a fifteen-year-old girl know about patience? What does a girl know of the steady turn of a telescope dial until the whole moon valleys crest into focus?”. This quote adds further detail to why the girl doesn’t like being outside. When I see “the steady turn of a telescope dial” it is obvious she is looking through a telescope with someone. She doesn’t seem to be very patient, bringing up how she would rather be doing other things instead. When I read those first two quotes, it makes me wonder why she hates looking through the telescope so much. This is where the visual imagery shows in the poem. She clarifies her hatred for stargazing by saying: “Standing there in our driveway with him, I smacked my legs, my arms, and my face so hard while I waited for him to find whatever small pinhole of light he wanted me to
When I read this poem I view the mosquitoes as excuses, taking away time from her father, almost the equivalent of the blood-sucking demons they are. They are sucking her time with her father away, little by little, until he grows old and eventually passes away. Another technique Nezhukumatathil uses is stanza length. The first thing you realize when looking at the poem is that all of the stanzas are four lines. The second thing that catches my eye is how the stanzas get a little shorter after each one. It makes me think about mosquitoes sucking your blood again. They do it slowly until you realize you have a huge bite. In the case of this poem, I feel like towards the end it gets kind of obvious that the girl's father isn’t going to live much longer. She feels bad about all the time she spent complaining about the mosquitoes and wishes she could get it back. The author portrays all of this using stanza length, and to me, that is quite cool and unique. To bring it back to the main thing I took away from this poem, always cherish time with your family members. Something could happen to them any day and you don’t want to wish you did something different once they aren’t as prominent in your