LESSONS IN LOVE’S GRAMMAR

by Leonore Hildebrandt


My mother believed in virginal weddings
and kept love’s rules and deviations under wraps. 
The nudists were of little help. At sand pits, lakes, and beaches,
men with large bellies sat on camping chairs
and women donning straw-hats and sunglasses
kept an eye on children squirming in shallow water.
 
At school, we read of wars and conquests––Latin,
it was thought, would ground us. Word-columns––
tenses, verbs––amo, amas. Love’s grammar spells out
who owns whom, who’s active, who passive.
(In ancient Rome, a man’s desire to penetrate a boy
was fine if the teen was slave, former slave, or prostitute.)

I was a girl who knew of gender. Nouns and pronouns
are inflected along with the words that go with them––
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik rolls off the tongue.
My mother was not inclined to cuddle her young children––
later I would dread our hellos and farewells,
the awkward embraces.

Love’s grammar is slippery. (When to use “they”?)
As conquests drag on and wars flare up
while amo/amas bends to new rules of correctness,
I think of nudities on wind-swept beaches
before we learned how the light ravishes
our beautiful, love-caressed, non-binary skin. 


* * * * *

"Lessons in Love's Grammar" was originally published in Hamilton Stone Review, Fall 2023.

Leonore Hildebrandt is the author of the poetry collections The Work at Hand, The Next Unknown, and Where You Happen to Be. Her poems and translations have appeared in The Cafe Review, Cerise Press, Cimarron Review, Denver Quarterly, The Fiddlehead, Harpur Palate, Poetry Daily, Rhino, and the Sugar House Review, among other journals. She was nominated several times for a Pushcart Prize. Originally from Germany, Leonore divides her time between Harrington, Maine, and Silver City, New Mexico.