epistemiC ConneCtions

epistemiC ConneCtions Brynn Richer

Creative Essay

38

Swinging, hanging by the comma instead of the period, against the black curtain with a faint squeaking in the rusty hinges. The comma our crescent moon illuminated, the period a distant yet approachable planet. Both forming a historic pause in the sky—a collective intake of breath for a debate I am not privy to.

It serves as the top to this whole circus tent, this semicolon; the pole letting a star-filled fabric drape over everything with folds and wrinkles in places never noticed. The velvet tent is always too dark to judge depth. I still search the horizon for places where the fabric flaps up with a gust of breeze from the other side.

Which sentence is this semicolon begging me to complete—which apology, which sunset-orange burst of anger, which smirk needs the ends tugged? What order is in motion, oh God, but not yet trumpet sounded? It feels like a night that doesn’t return these questioning acoustic vibrations. This cathedral of gas exchanges, of beautiful gestures, of delicate nothing, grows tense waiting.

There are two freckles punctuated and stacked neatly on my skin. They grow cancerous in their colon expectations. What lesson is this, what fragment of divine figment is beneath these layers? They reveal themselves slowly, one at a time, becoming more transparent as they rise to the surface. Unfavorably, they remain blurry until the top. Even then, their graphite message gets smudged in a few hours.

I have always waited for the last part of the sentence, but I don’t ever think of what the words could be. I am afraid they will tell me I am a lighthouse whose beam never lands on anything, and whose watchman is asleep.

Before this semicolon, the sky was burnt orange and cobalt. Now everything is drawn curtain black. For the day, the showman of this circus has retired. Tomorrow more lions and elephants will show. I don’t know if I am more nervous for the show to start again or to be left in the emptiness.

Nothing but the yellow and white borders on the asphalt are visible after the sunset. It is a relief not to see the tire skids of exclamation, the red-mouthed, fur-stained periods to lives just crossing through. I wish I hadn’t admired the silhouettes on the other side of the road, where the sunset couldn’t stretch, for their ambiguity.

The road before me only leads my thoughts to the edge of a dash, waiting to connect.