As the first line indicates, “Metaphors” is a riddle for the reader to solve. Fortunately, the metaphors provide enough clues to give the reader confidence in the solution: the speaker is a pregnant woman, and the images she selects suggest how she feels about her condition.
The first line tells us the speaker is not only a riddle for readers to decode, but one in "nine syllables." This refers to the nine months of gestation; it is less obvious whether she has in mind a specific nine-syllable phrase, but the word "metaphors" itself contains nine letters, and each of the nine...
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