Do I terrify?" (lines 10-12). It seems that she is telling the readers to figuratively reveal her face, then calls the readers her enemy, and asks if she terrifies them. Lady Lazarus goes on to use bizarre imagery to describe what she looks like. She links herself to a kind of living corpse, with "eye pits" instead of eyeballs, and "sour breath.".
As readers begin to read the next few stanzas, the poem begins to become clearer and the mysterious "it" is discovered:.
"Soon, soon the flesh.
The grave cave ate will be.
At home on me.
And I a smiling woman. .
I am only thirty. .
And like the cat I have nine times to die. .
This is Number Three. .
What a trash.
To annihilate each decade" (lines 16-24).
In these lines, Lady Lazarus gets more specific and reveals that "it" is death. She tells the readers that the flesh that was eaten by her grave will soon feel at home on her, as if she was already dead and her grave ate her flesh. She says that she is thirty and that she is smiling, but why would she be smiling if her life is so grim and dark? Maybe she is referring to how people see her, like they are mistaking her scowl for a grin. Lady Lazarus then uses simile to tell readers that she is like a cat, which is said to have nine lives. The only difference is that she is not referring to how many times she has to live, but how many times she has to die. Lady Lazarus tells us that "This is Number Three" (line 22), saying that she is experiencing her third death. The speaker uses the word "annihilate," meaning destroy, so it can be perceived that she feels as if she has been destroyed once a decade. In the next few lines, Lady Lazarus describes her own body as a million little strands in front of a "peanut-crunching crowd" (line 26), like a circus or a carnival, and she seems to be the main event. The crowd unwraps her clothing and can see her hands, knees, skin, and bone, but she explains that regardless of this, she is the "same, identical woman" (line 34).