Most poems about losing someone are really about the person left behind: the ache, the anger, the empty room. Susovan's «If Your Person Isn't Me» does something rarer. It spends almost all its lines picturing another person's care for the one the speaker loves. Its central idea is that love can be measured by what we wish for someone even when we may not be part of their future.
The poem opens with a quiet piece of grammar. "You're always going to be my person" is certain, but "if I don't turn out to be yours" is not. The phrase "turn out to be" makes being someone's person sound like a result the speaker can't control, something time will reveal. Then comes a confession: "I hope they treat you better than I did." The admission of failure arrives in the third line, before any of the wishes, so every kindness that follows reads as one the speaker feels they didn't manage. That is an inference from the text, but it gives the list an undertone of guilt as well as generosity.
The form is free verse with no rhyme scheme, so repetition does the work rhyme usually would. "I hope they" returns again and again, like a blessing. Because the lines run to different lengths, the poem sounds like speech, a person talking and thinking of one more thing to add. The one noticeable enjambment falls in "the first thing they / tell you in the morning is the dream they just had." The line break leaves "they" hanging for a moment, as if the speaker is picturing that stranger, and then the sentence moves on to something intimate.
The imagery is domestic and small. Nobody in this poem gives roses or grand gestures. Instead there is someone who will "scrub your back in the shower," "plait your hair before bed," and make tea "without you having to ask first." The notes on the fridge and the hamburger "remove[d]" of its pickles are the most telling details. They show love as attention: knowing a trivial preference and acting on it unprompted. Even "playlists that sound like your name" works this way. Music can't literally sound like a name, but the strange phrase suggests songs chosen so closely to a person that they seem to belong to them. And a partner who shares their dream first thing in the morning is someone who treats the half-awake mind as worth sharing.
The turn comes with "And, if Your Person Isn't Me." The capital letters now treat "Your Person" almost like a title, a role that someone else might hold. The mood shifts too, from "I hope" to "I will." The wishes were about other people, but the promise is about the speaker. Here the poem also describes itself most closely, with "all of my human ruins" and "all of my shining adequacy." (The text as supplied reads "humam" and "adequency," which look like slips, so I have read them as "human" and "adequacy.") "Ruins" suggests damage, but also something that was once built and is still standing. "Shining adequacy" is a deliberate clash, because "adequate" is about the least shiny word in English. The speaker refuses both flattery and self-punishment and claims only to be enough, flawed and still worth something. The last line, "I will love you," has no ornament and no condition attached.
What makes the poem significant is how it reverses our expectations of a love poem. It offers no bargaining, no jealousy and no plea to be chosen. Its generosity is also not simple. The speaker hopes someone else will be better, and that hope costs something, which the poem allows us to feel. A reader might wonder whether such wishes are fully possible or partly a way of coping, and the poem leaves that open. It also shows how much plain words, repetition and concrete detail can carry. A hamburger without pickles says more here than a grand declaration would.