the death hyphen

it's only a fullstop for the deceased
for the rest of us, it's a comma
a pause in the prosaic flow
of our own lives
or a right-bracket closing a clause
or a semi-colon, signalling that a phrase
is over
or some new punctuation mark
which i would like to propose
three lines radiating from left to right
the uppermost angled upwards
the central line horizontal
the lowermost angled downwards
i call this the death-hyphen
and it indicates that all the words
and paragraphs and chapters
that follow now
carry an added inflection
or are hollowed out just a little bit
because someone or something has died