Swati Joshi is pursuing her doctoral studies in Medical Humanities at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar. Prior to joining Ph.D., she was working as a Lecturer of English Literature at St. Xavier's College, Ahmedabad. Her research is published in Synapse: A Health Humanities Journal, Medical Humanities| BMJ, and SANGLAP: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry.

Swati Joshi

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Punctuation Wardrobe

I was wearing a beaded colon;
a loquacious spherule
pecking on the neck
of a shy, reticent globule.

He was presumably cladded in a sexy, curly comma.
His smile—an inviting dependent clause,
lured me to invest my passionate emotions
for receiving his independent clause of love.

Alas! The moment of epiphany pierced my heart when he said,

"I am sorry for giving you the wrong impression.
I've always worn the formal, black full-stop for meeting you.
Perhaps one of my half-broken, low-hanging lapels
might've created the mirage of comma to you."

I rushed home and changed from the sweaty colon to silken ellipsis.
Lying on the bed, the soft three horizontal spheres caressed my thighs,

erasing my fantasies about him.