Personification is a specific type of metaphor in which a nonhuman entity is given human qualities. The opening lines of “My Life with the Wave” personify the wave as a woman in love who abandons her life in the sea to “leap off” with the narrator to the city. The two speak to one another, share intimate moments, and fight, just as a human couple would do. However, Paz’s personification of the wave is complex because it is bound in the story’s surrealism, which blurs the lines of reality and fiction. The wave’s sounds and movements are a metaphor for a woman’s tumultuous emotions, but Paz heightens the intensity of the relationship by imparting her with supernatural powers of transformation, beyond a human’s capabilities. Despite the similarities the wave shares with a person in love, it is ultimately her lack of humanity—her lack of a “center,” or emotional depth and vulnerability—that the narrator suggests as the source of the relationship’s failure.

Imagery, in both poetry and prose, uses descriptive language to invoke certain sensory experiences. “My Life with the Wave” has an abundance of imagery: visual, auditory, tactile, kinesthetic, and even organic.