The Grammar Of Relationships

Diagramming Won’t Help This Situation

by Kevin Brown

Grammatical rules have always baffled
me, leaving me wondering whether my
life is transitive or intransitive, if I am the
subject or object of my life, and no one
has been able to provide words to describe
my actions, even if they do end in –ly.

But now the problem seems to be with
pronouns: I am unwilling to be him
and you are unable to be her, so we
will never be them~the ones talking
about what they need from the grocery

store because the Rogers are coming for
dinner tonight; the couple saving for a
vacation, perhaps a cruise to Alaska or a
museum tour of Europe; the two who meet
with a financial advisor to plan their children’s

college fund while still managing to set enough
aside for their retirement~and so we will
continue to be nothing more than sentence
fragments, perfectly fine for effect,
but forever looking for the missing
part of speech we can never seem to find.

Poet’s Note: I always thought this poem was inspired by an impending breakup, as it was written just a week or two before a breakup we both knew was coming. It was amicable, as she was moving away, and we reunited a year later and are now engaged. However, when I started looking through old journal entries and emails, it turns out that it was inspired by something I read, not the event itself. Oddly enough, I cannot remember what I read or how it inspired the poem, as I wrote it two years ago. Of course, I’m sure the upcoming split had something to do with the creation of the poem, as it was certainly on my mind, but it wasn’t overtly conscious.

Poet Kevin Brown, Exit Lines. © PlainView Press, 2009.
Reprinted by permission. Visit the poet at his website and blog.