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Molly Mulrooney Wade

Ode to the Comma

She is lowly, but only in physique.

Borne of southern descent, she is proud of her curvaceous nature and outward swing of her left hip.

A separatist by nature, Comma is an advocate of independence and autonomy. She can’t help it.

Causal remedy to the breathless, she encourages all to pause, reflect, and inhale… before the final exhalation of wonder, opinion or fact.

The best defense against serial killers, Comma places herself after each item in a series (except for the last item), acknowledging the import of each word, sewing vernacular fragments. She’s a seamstress!

Comma is a mathematician. She can separate three digits in numbers and fire in rapid succession. (“Here is how best to earn your first 100,000,000 dollars.”) Add her to any arithmetic equation and she will hold her own every-single-time.

More modest, Comma does not seek the glory of, say, Quotation. He, of course, is narcissistic by nature, always referring back to himself, drawing attention to himself, always sought by outsiders as a stamp of authenticity.

Instead, Comma simply tries to serve as an attributor, one meant to coordinate adjectives and she tries to avoid, at all costs, non-coordinate adjectives. They are, well, excessive.

Hope. If nothing else, Comma signifies hope. Unlike Period (the signifier of finality), Comma seeks to explore the best of humanity: pause, reflection, breath.

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