Written in unrhymed verse, the lyrical poem comprises of five nine-line stanzas with varying line lengths. The lines are often enjambed, clauses running on, as in the case of

Touched by a match, they might warm me,

And their fine lines singe

The air to orange

Before the distances they pin evaporate (Lines 3-6).

The regular stanzaic structure can be seen as a deliberate poetic device; a way for its speaker to attempt order in an unstable world. The structural soundness of the poem is a foil for its themes of instability and impermanence.

The enjambment amplifies the poem’s mood of uncertainty and bleakness, the lines breaking right after verbs and nouns, leaving the reader in suspense about the subject’s fate. Such instances of enjambment can be seen here:

There is no life higher than the grasstops

Or the hearts of sheep, and the wind

Pours by like destiny, bending

Everything in one direction (Lines 10-13).

The run-on sentences undercut the regular stanza structure, lending the poem an edge. Plath uses little alliteration in the poem but achieves a musical, haunting quality akin to echoes through repetition, such as in “they only dissolve and dissolve” (Line 8).