(i)

When I was young
I loved E. E. Cummings.

I loved what he did to a page.

The little i.
The parentheses.
The words falling out of line
like they had somewhere better to be.

I looked at his poems
the way I looked at paintings—
not just for what they said
but for where they sat.

The distance between words.
The white space.
The strange feeling
that even the wrong thing
had been placed there
exactly right.

I loved that.

Years later
when I wasn’t entirely inside myself
I started writing

(i)

I don’t know why.

Maybe I did.

Maybe I just didn’t have another way
to say I felt smaller than myself.

A little me inside parentheses.
Contained. Quieter. Easier to overlook.

I had spent so much time feeling unreal
that even the letter I used for myself
needed somewhere to hide.

I didn’t think of it as anything important.

It was just a letter.

Except it wasn’t.

Not then.

I was making myself smaller
until smaller felt like safety.

And maybe that’s why
I understood Cummings
before I understood myself.

He made the page
do something unexpected.

I was doing the same to myself.

But I still love him.

I still love the little rebellions—
the lowercase i
the words refusing to behave
the white space doing half the talking.

I don’t gravitate toward his work
the way I once did.

But I don’t need to.

I don’t live inside the parentheses anymore.

I can let the letter stand alone.

I.

And for the first time
it doesn’t feel small.