I was a language unrecognised by my human family. They fashioned a fabric from the loom of their grammar—the warp of their subjects forced into concord with the weft of their verbs, the fibres dyed vermillion, the colour of shame.

A red thread of syntax tethered me to their path, my vision obstructed by a heavily draping hood.

So constrained was life within this cloth cage that I lost the old rhythms, the old melodies, the chords that once formed my being. But some resounding strain pulled me back, through the dark wood, to the house where my Grandmother lived. 

At first I did not recognise her.

With claw-like determination and incisor-sharp will, she had sliced through the threads of her own family’s grammar, and now she stood before me, firm and free.

I threw myself into the soft fur of her embrace. The red cloak dropped like a morpheme, unbound.

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Would you like to know more about this story? I talk about it in Episode 88 of Structured Visions, ‘Grammar shame’. Subscribe to the podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you like to listen.