This poem shares its opening premise with “Asymmetry” and then goes somewhere entirely different, which is why both are worth publishing. Where the earlier poem argued its way to a thesis about compatibility, this one abandons argument for romping. The seed is identical — pronouns as the units of division, Us and Them resolving into We — but the flower is a pair of animals rolling in a field.

The opening compresses what “Asymmetry” spread across three lines. “My pronouns are Us and Them / knotted— / until understanding arrives.” Knotted is the key change: where the companion poem had a wall melting, this one has a tangle, and the tangle turns out to be the poem’s governing image rather than an obstacle. The knot is not undone. It becomes weaving.

“We” lands isolated on its own line, exactly as it did in “Asymmetry,” and then the poems diverge completely. This one asks what We actually does with its union, and the answer is deliberately unserious: “tangle our limbs, tickle our toes, / and roll laughing in the grass.” The weaving metaphor turns physical and playful. These are not two philosophers agreeing; they are two bodies uninterested in fighting because they would rather play.

The animal turn is the poem’s method and its risk. “Do you know what that is from a cat’s or dog’s interwoven perspective?” reframes the whole scene through pets, who tangle and tumble without any of the Us-and-Them machinery humans build. Animals never constructed the division in the first place, so for them union is not an achievement, it’s the default. The poem envies that.

“Puurfect — Pawfect — Rufffect” is where a reader will either delight or wince. Three coined words, each folding an animal sound into a word of approval — purr into perfect, paw into perfect, ruff into perfect. It is pure wordplay, the kind David reaches for often, and here it is entirely unserious in a way the poem has earned by the time it arrives. After tumbling in the grass, three animal puns are the correct register. A reader who found them too cute would have a point; a reader who accepts the poem’s play will find them consistent with it.

The close recovers the weaving image and lands it. “They never forget how to be Ours— / the only tapestry love needs.” Animals never forget how to belong, because they never learned otherwise, and the tapestry pulls the knot, the weaving, and the tangling into one figure. Love does not need symmetry or resolution or even understanding, in this version. It needs to be woven, tangled, Ours.

The lighter of the two pronoun poems, and the more charming for it. Where “Asymmetry” diagrammed the argument, this one plays it out — tumbling in the grass rather than reasoning toward compatibility. The weaving conceit is well sustained, moving from knotted to weave to tangle to tapestry across a short span without strain.

The animal reframing is the good idea. Pointing out that cats and dogs never built the Us-and-Them division, so union is their natural state rather than an accomplishment, gives the poem a genuine thought under the play.

What holds it below the companion poem is the wordplay at its centre. “Puurfect — Pawfect — Rufffect” is a matter of taste, and the poem stakes a fair amount on the reader enjoying it. For readers who do, it caps the romping tone perfectly; for readers who don’t, it tips an already-light poem into cute. It is also the one moment the poem stops developing its idea to perform a trick. The tapestry close recovers well, but the poem never quite reaches the argument “Asymmetry” earns — which is the correct outcome, since this poem chose play over argument, but it does place it a half-step lower.