Punctuation

Without commas in her gaze,

the little girl dribbles colons with each breath

and swears an exclamation mark

is a lollipop:

“Is growing up for real or make-believe?”

Dot dot dot, I gasped.

A question mark is a fisherman’s hook.

I’d taken the bait of uncertainty, 

when she offered me as consolation,

wrapped in quotation marks, a single Smartie.