Escaping from a headline this morning, a comma is rolling across the city and our article is running after it, all out of breath, without its favorite little pause.
Yes, we’re devoting the main page to a tiny mark and, yes, we know this is an orchestrated uproar over almost nothing.
At 7:04 a.m., the head of typesetting saw the comma leave our main headline with the nonchalance of a determined speck of dust. Since then, this text—hi, it’s me—has been trying to catch it word by word, which explains this irregular breathing and these sentences that stand without sitting down. It slides along recipes (add salt instead of add, salt), throws stop signs out of whack, then stops itself, just to watch us panic as though we could headline eternity.
“We all need a little pause, but this time it bolted for the fields,” sighs Lucie Pataquès, municipal librarian and unofficial keeper of late-afternoon sighs. According to the Bureau of Discreet Signs, there’s no danger, only mix-ups: a tender brouhaha that reminds you that reading without commas is running without pockets. Besides, the semicolon offered its help; we declined, out of modesty (and to avoid getting clever).
Let’s pick up: this front page knows it’s dramatizing a fleck of ink. It also knows you needed a little air, just now. The comma knows it better than all of us: it hovers above this paragraph, cute, willful, and promises to come home as soon as we stop playing the pursuers. Sorry for the stunt, thanks for reading; there it is, coming back, settling into place, and, all at once, lowering our shoulders.
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