Five acts of tenderness (a kiss, a held hand, a hug, a call, tears) and not one is explained by love. That is the quiet shock of Bremarie Gulfan's «OF». Where we expect "I kiss you because I adore you," the speaker keeps offering something less comfortable: fear. The poem confesses that affection can be a form of self-defence, and that the person who clings hardest may be the one least sure of being wanted.
The construction is simple and deliberately repetitive. Each stanza opens with the single word "Reason," alone on its line, and the comma after it works like a held breath before an admission. Then come the action and a clause built on "Because" or "Is because", always with "I'm scared". This repeated opening, anaphora, makes the poem read like a list of answers, as if someone has asked the speaker to justify themselves and they reply one painful item at a time. There is no rhyme and no regular metre. The lines are short and uneven, and the rhythm is that of speech, which suits a confession that sounds spoken rather than performed.
The repetition works because it isn't quite repetition: the fears climb. First the speaker fears "you leave me," then "to loose you," then "you replace me," then "you'll never look at me," and finally "you'll never love me." The early fears are events that could happen to a relationship, such as a departure, a loss or a rival. The later ones are more intimate and harder to bear: not being seen, not being loved. The earlier fears are symptoms, and the last line names the disease. It is also the only line to end with a full stop, so the admission closes like a door. "Love," the word we expect to drive every kiss, appears only here, and only as something the speaker fears never receiving.
The actions shift too. A kiss, a held hand and a hug all need the other person to be right there. "I call for you" and "I cry for you" do not. Calling suggests someone out of earshot, and crying "for" someone suggests the speaker is alone. The poem drifts from touch to distance, from the closeness the speaker is trying to guarantee to the absence they dread. "Look at me" is especially telling, because what the speaker wants is not a conversation or a promise but a glance.
Pay attention to the pronouns. "I" starts nearly every action, and four of the five fears end in "me": leave me, replace me, look at me, love me. The speaker is the one things might be done to. Only "lose you" puts the other person at the end of the line, and the spelling "loose" may, whether intended or not, add a second meaning: a grip loosening, which fits the anxious hand-holding two stanzas earlier. The diction is plain throughout. "Scared" is a blunt, almost childlike word, not "afraid" or "terrified", and repeating it five times without dressing it up gives the poem its raw honesty. A small shift in tense, from "kissed" in the first stanza to the present tense afterwards, makes the confession feel as though it is happening as we read.
The title is a preposition left hanging. Judging by the poem's contents, it reads like the start of a phrase, perhaps "fear of", with the stanzas supplying the ending. That is an inference, but it fits a poem whose every line is about something unfinished: a relationship whose future the speaker cannot control.
The poem is significant because it turns the usual love poem inside out. Instead of declaring devotion, it asks what lies underneath devotion and finds insecurity. The irony is that every gesture meant to keep the beloved close is powered by the belief that it won't be enough. We never hear the other person's reply, and the poem offers no reassurance, which leaves the reader with the speaker's uncertainty. For a young reader, that may be its strongest appeal. It says plainly something many people feel and few admit: that sometimes "I love you" is easier to act out than to trust.