If Only

My Peace Corps language instructor once asked, “Erin, do you know the subjunctive?”

I nodded, “Yes.”

“Then, you have to use it.”

I had learned the grammar construct that indicated uncertainty. Often I chose not to use it because it seemed unnecessary. Other times, I challenged, “How do you know what I mean? Only I can know that.”

The last time I tried to understand the subjunctive was while learning Hebrew. Everyone seemed to have a different opinion. Everyone is a rather small world of grammar experts, the most opinionated being my niece who accepts one of the constructs but not the other.

If

Exists present to present

If

Exists future to future

If

Only

Begins in the past to be lamented in the present

If

Only

Intersection

Juxtaposition

Between what I want

And what I want to say.

Fabrication

Ficcion

Between what I want

And what I want to believe about what I say.

If only

Exists when I understand the line

Exists when I choose to understand a line

Between reality and fantasy

An editor invisibly crafts meaning out of words that lack clarity but even editors see the line

Between

If and only

And back away

It’s an imposition, an interruption, even an interpretation “to impose the subjunctive on writers who do not naturally use it.” (100)

Is it not second nature to divide fantasy from reality?

Or is it a choice to teach our stories to distinguish from dreams

If

Only

Dreyer, Benjamin. (2019). Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style.

Random House: New York.