Dash

How unlike a cat is this slender dash of ink upon the page, this pinch of print, this little line of punctuation, adding its mere millimetres of meaning, black against white, significant in its separation of segments of the sentence, imbuing words around it with a dab of consequence or moment. How like a printed dash is my black cat, stretched and stark against the sun-white concrete of the distant yard baking below, separating nothing but atoms of air, elongated, luxuriating, significant only in herself – a piece of furry punctuation that tells us solely that it is, and needs no function to perform. By itself, it is of itself, answerable to no one and to nothing – except the rain, which has just arrived, suddenly, in slapping, ponderous lumps, to soak the stone page and darken it, and drive her dash to drier quarters.