Irene's "In the Dark" starts like a bedtime rhyme, but the nightmares in it aren't childish. The opening stanza speaks to someone else, almost like advice: life isn't simple, don't believe what fear tells you, and hold on until things end. Then the voice shifts to "I," and the monsters move out of the closet and into the speaker's head, where they shout and push the thought that death would be easier. The speaker pushes back: "I don't want to be dead."
By the end, the fear turns into anger and grief. The speaker can't eat or sleep, cries alone, and keeps asking "Where were you?" The poem suggests someone who should have helped didn't, though it never says exactly what happened. The final lines leave the speaker caught between wanting to remember and being afraid to, still unable to trust. The mood is raw, anxious, and urgent, and the short, repeating rhymes feel like a racing mind that can't settle.