
Sonnet to an Em-Dash
Oh Em-Dash, how I envy your fame –
You’re viral now, the talk of every feed.
When readers see your stroke, they cry this name:
“ChatGPT!”- they gasp, as if it conjured thee.
Emily Dickinson first set you free,
With jagged breaths that split the measured line;
Aeons before cold code learned mimicry,
You carved your pauses – human, stark, divine.
Now minds are drowned in algorithmic stew,
In fluent floods no mortal hand could ladle;
Still I shall keep you, dash, as Britain knew –
Plain “dash” at school, no typographic fable.
So let them shout “AI!” at what I write –
I learned from Dickinson to break the line right.

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