We Own it

 Raised in a school system that told us: 

Use every punctuation mark—prove you understand language.

Semicolons like medals,
colons like gateways,
commas like breath—
and the em dash?
A triumph.

Then AI came.
And suddenly, punctuation became suspicious.
The Oxford comma—too precise.
The em dash—too stylised.
Too confident.
Too human.

Now they say:
"Write like a person."
But not like that.
Not like you.
Not like the way they taught you,
or the way your brain naturally spills
onto the page—unfiltered,
beautiful,
punctuated.

I say:
Em dashes unite.
Oxford commas rise.
Every full stop is a resistance.
Every comma is a choice.
We were taught this language.
We own it.