punctuation

once in seventh grade I think our teacher gave us a page of words without punctuation or capital letters and we had to figure out where the sentences were and how to make sense of the words the words could be divided up in more ways than one sort of like how my life feels right now when unemployment and alzheimers and marriage and schnauzers and friends and stopping at the post office all run together and I’m not sure which one starts the sentence and which one ends it whether the night is sandwiched between two days or the day between two nights or how time flies whether or not you’re having a good time with my second cup of coffee I’m waking up a bit here in the coffee shop maybe that’s why I’m typing so fast and watching the lady with her baby who is here every week with her friend for her afternoon out of the house and the baby is vocalizing like a rabid soprano not the TV kind maybe she likes being out of the house as well who knows how life gets punctuated certainly not in passive voice we punctuate life I think without having a chance to see the whole paragraph or even the whole sentence before we have to decide on a period or comma or when we’re really feeling adventurous a semi-colon how I long for some parentheses from time to time but they don’t seem to keep as much out as I would like I didn’t expect them to be translucent they look so strong on the page a period of time is not a full stop it has room to move around while I figure out where to go next then again maybe I’ll just sit here awhile longer and listen to the baby she has a grammar all her own punctuating the air with untranslatable exclamations I wonder what would happen if I tried a few of those myself the guy behind me would spew his soup and I would be asked to leave and I have to go home anyway time for dinner new recipe

Peace,
Milton