Phantom Punctuation

A hidden comma curled like a seahorse in the mind. Wraithlike periods, ghostly ellipses, the semi-colons albino and invisible. These are the spectres of phantom punctuation, the incorporeal spirits of the mouth, gathering the breathlessness of thought, run-on and indivisible, as if between the cupped and narrow hands of paradise.

If the written word is weather fallen from the troposphere of speech, punctuation, rising from the apostrosphere, is the seasons, giving shape to the spoken year with its ecliptic and paradoxes, its long summer dashes, its bitter winter of exclamations. Grammar the pre-emptive counsel of language before the chaos of the mouth.