grammar

I like the way, (she says, she is me,

maybe, my chin on my knee

and I am talking to myself,

even my hair is parenthetical,

framing the blankness in my face) —

(she bites her lip, she, I —

I restart my words.)

I like the way (I clear my throat)

my — your — my bones assert themselves in my wrist,

the muscles sliding down my leg.

I confuse my pronouns because I’m different people.

I am me of the third person, the adjectivial girl,

and sometimes of the second when the adverbs are applied.

I lift my head into the first person and I am nothing but nouns and verbs,

and I am terrified, I describe and I qualify,

but I am nothing and I do nothing.

I like the angles and curves in my body because they are definable and describable,

like I could set them out in math.

These descriptors are more accurate but so much less real:

you are adjectival and adverbial,

nominal and verbal,

but there is calculus inside you too,

your vector-driven path at approaching zero.