Symbols are objects, persons, or places that represent something more abstract, such as an idea, an emotion, or a theme. What do you think the "borders" and "backseat" in stanza 3 symbolize? Consider what you have learned about Naomi Shihab Nye's life as you interpret
the larger meaning of these images.

"Making a Fist"
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.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.

"How do you know if you are going to die?"
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
"When you can no longer make a fist."

Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.