Ampersand
AMPERSAND
I asked my kids a question,
“If I were a symbol, what would I be?”
I waited for hearts or a smile emoji,
something tangible to see
“You are an ampersand.”
The 27th letter removed—
not missing, not lost in the archive of sound,
but something softer than absence,
something that refuses to be called back
into the shape of language.
It lives beyond naming,
where words loosen their grip
and meaning stops asking to be held—
a quiet after the alphabet,
a breath the mouth remembers
but never learns to say.
Not yet curved,
not yet connected,
just motion without hinge.
&
late nights arrived
like unfinished sentences.
I lay awake
listening to my heart
remembering it was once only mine
and now it was full of breathing.
It used to be just “I,”
One heartbeat, one life, one sky,
Now it’s me & them,
A love that doesn’t end.
Strength & softness,
Dreams & sacrifice,
Holding every piece together
Through the chaos of this life.
something in me began to loop—
not breaking, not ending,
but forming a ligature
that loops without bending,
a joining that holds shape
without ever stopping
turning back into itself
with someone else inside it.
Tiny shoes by the doorway,
lullabies hummed at night,
pieces of me scattered gently
into everything I hold tight.
They didn’t just change my world—
they rewrote the way I stand,
teaching me love is not addition,
but the shape of “and.”
And in the hush after midnight,
when everything lets go,
I hear them in my breathing—
and I understand without words.
I was never only “I.”
I was always becoming
And “per se” and.
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