Romana Iorga
punctuation
the medium sentence you wanted to live in
had been heavily damaged in the flood.
you said, we can repair it ourselves.
no need for contractors. tears
were copious that fall.
ellipses kept
dropping
from
the neighbor’s tree into our yard. i was
always there with the broom, while
you shopped for a saw. we were
civil. one cannot simply
close the door
to a syllable
and say
nothing for the rest of the day. syntax
was important and so was food
on the table. and the children,
of course. we put them
to sleep inside
vowels.
we turned off the consonants, left
the syllables ajar. you hung on
to the tail of a semicolon,
let it take you out
for a walk.
i curled
inside a question mark
with a good book.
the sentence
was silent,
night
looking in through tall
exclamation points,
the em dashes
between us
stretching
on and
on
Originally from Chisinau, Moldova, Romana Iorga lives in Switzerland. She is the author of two poetry collections in Romanian. Her work in English has appeared or is forthcoming in Salamander, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, American Literary Review, and others, as well as on her poetry blog at clayandbranches.com.