Punctuation

 

 

As you measure your days from the suspension point,

the dog rolls belly-up into full gravity surrender.

Her four paws drift above silky thrown-back ears

and lips drawn like drapes, pulled away to reveal

the killing-canines of her ancestors, sharp slashes in the softness,

oddly comic, almost fierce,

like the freeze-frame squirrel that posed quivering this morning

in early spring slim, red coat fanned by the sun

into embers caught as ellipsis, between pause

and alarm, admonishment vibrating its question-mark tail,

reminding me not 

of this gelatinous dog, slack-back relaxed in a parenthetic joy,

but of how easy it is to not notice my own shape, or how I punctuate this life,

and what it might mean to read it.