Déformation professionnelle : typist

The French use the expression "déformation professionnelle" to refer to the tendency to look at things from the point of view of one's own profession or special expertise

people are the punctuation to the prose of our lives,
the semi-colons that release you into the next parts of yourself;

the ellipses that leave you wondering…
(the parentheses you don’t see coming)

all the question marks?

if a lover is an exclamation point, a husband is a full stop.

you try to write your own story
(read: choice; empowerment; self-actualization)
but it makes no sense without punctuation.

your self-actualized life—interrupted by an untimely em dash
that takes you to the next page
or sends you back to the beginning—
because even if it’s choose-your-own-adventure
you can’t write it alone.

pages will be spilled on and ripped out,
re-written,
translated by strangers who read you and love your work
and want to be your hyphen,
want to splice your comma,
re-write you
and in the process
be re-written by you.

people make you into unabridged editions
keep you in a state of work in progress…
etc.
permeate your borders,
broaden your margins,
in ecstatic transmutation translation
quotation
the marks of your own “becoming.”

(separators)
(terminators)
(enclosers)
(connectors)

other people pattern your diction/
break your lines/

and isn’t that the point?

who would want to read the book if they knew the plot from a to z?
if the story could be written without punctuation?