Empty House

I am an empty house, a place where all absences converge, furnished with shadows and whispers and an urge for words that try to command but will not serve.

I’m strung together, a run-on sentence difficult to maneuver through without proper punctuation.

I need more than commas to catch my breath, to prevent collisions between thought and doubt, to curb action that always ends in exclamation or ellipsis…

Colons are helpful, and lists, and bullet points for my:

• ups and downs

• ins and outs

• pros and cons

• strengths and flaws,

but, without commas, without a pause, things all run together defying the laws of common sense.

I don’t need diacritical marks: umlauts are thuggish, accents grave, acute, precious.

I need fewer periods and only when the timing is right, and fewer question marks.

Please forgive my apostrophes if they seem more possessive than desired.

Sometimes my tendency to I-Me-Mine overcomes his, hers, theirs.