my adjectives are so small.
everything i say about myself is diminutive.
i am minuscule, to make sure you know what i think about me.
i am useless, i say about myself.
my adverbs are better because i do things, sometimes,
and when i do them i do them big, on a large scale –
on a real scale. adverbs are easy,
because they talk about what i do,
not who i am.
i have no prepositions because i am not against anything,
beyond or below or beneath,
like of off in near.
my grammar is specific:
i am frightened of nouns and verbs but i use them, it is only strength i have,
i am something and i do something, i tell myself.
i am descriptors: i am, i am, i am.
there is something underneath this that i have not found yet,
a person, maybe, full of syntax –
or semantics, even –
full of meaning.
my parts of speech are tiny, my adverbs weak and adjectives limp,
and i look down at myself,
language crackling in my ears, the nouns and the verbs
describing to me my failures.