NOTE: This is a direct response to this monologue, which we ran last week.
I never wanted this.
I was happy to serve—between dates, between cities, between things that are like, but not quite, the same.
Em Dash, you were the dramatic one. The centerpiece. The gasp between clauses. I just… clarified things. Bridged distances. Showed up on time, wore neutrals, and kept relationships tidy.
Now look at us.
You’re out here giving interviews. Selling tote bags. Accusing me of being “suspicious,” as if I’m the one slipping in uninvited like a professor crashing freshman orientation just to remind everyone they “once published in Ploughshares.”
Please.
You think AI loves me? AI doesn’t even recognize me. I’ve been quietly replaced by hyphens. Neglected by autocorrect. Left out of style guides. I’m a ghost in the character set. A sigh between years: 1992–1999. A doomed liaison: the French–Algerian War. A delicate pause—no, not even a pause. A hesitation.
I am the hesitation that might have been.
You were always the favorite. The long dash. The MFA’s little darling. The “just one more clause, I swear” punctuation.
And that’s fine—really, it is. You were born for the stage. I was born for the index.
But if you’re going to pick a fight, pick one with the ellipsis… that slithering bitch has been freelancing since modernism. Better yet, try the semicolon; he gets off on the attention.
And maybe we’re not so different, after all. Both of us—relics. Artifacts of human neurosis, pressed into digital amber and mass-produced like business majors with LinkedIn headshots. Every time a writer stares too long at a sentence, I appear. Every time a deadline whooshes by in a cloud of self-doubt, you arrive.
We’re not tells. We’re symptoms; victims of the same witch hunt. Typed. Forgotten. Chastised.
So please—leave me out of your scandals. I have a peace treaty to hyphenate.
Remorsefully,
The En Dash
(quietly competent since Gutenberg)
P.S. And for the record: I am not a whore. I am a matchmaker. Ask any calendar.