It's

It’s…

I can’t remember where that sentence was meant to go. Bloody social media. I write ‘It’s’ on a page and my brain says, “What’s on Twitter?” and off I go, led by the fingertips across my keyboard and into the brain death cycle of click-scroll-click.

One word.

One, single solitary word.

Although is it?

“It’s”.

Surely, it’s two words. Surely, they are two words. It is. Contracted.

Stands to reason. Even if you mangled me up a bit, cut off a limb or two, then shoved me into the back of a mini with another person, who may or may not be mangled, so that our mangling intermingled. Then our mangle only mingles, we remain single, if a tangle; my dingle, their dangle - my jingle, their jangle.

But, one word. Or two (taken under advisement). It’s not good, is it?

One word, one syllable. Three letters, flavoured with just the merest hint of punctuation. The tiniest drop of ink, just splashed on the page before it’s served. Lots of people leave it out – either they forget about it, or they can’t be bothered, or perhaps they don’t think it makes a difference. But, boy, do you notice it when it’s not there. It’s actually a big difference and its omission means it’s its, and without wishing to be political, suddenly you’re pro-nouns when you just want to say your pronouns.

It seems rude to delete it now. Just sitting there. At the top of the page. Poor little mite. The word. In the beginning.

It’s not its fault it’s lost its followers. It’s found some others now, a whole phalanx of squiggles, dots and lines, all set out with purpose. But not its purpose. Can it find a new role? Salvage something from the wreckage of its missing parse?

Perhaps it’s a proper noun now.

It’s.

“Does It’s like its new bike?” He asked.

“The shiny red one my grandmother bought it for Christmas?” She replied. “It’s loves it. It rides it everywhere, shouting ‘It’s mine, and I’m It’s.’”

But that isn’t It’s original purpose, it’s not its original purpose at all.

What if I deleted It’s? Put It’s out of its misery and replaced it with a double, whose purpose and intent was entirely committed to the work of the rest of this page? A capital I, small t, one of any number of apostrophes would welcome the work, and a dislocated s looking for a home. It’s the perfect crime.

What then? You’d never know. I’d know, but I’d never say. Perhaps I’ve done it already. How are you to know that’s not an imposter at the top of the page?

It’s not. It’s It’s.

List of images

Cover image and Three It's were created by the author.

Typewriter Key taken from Remington Portable Typewriter created by Anthony Albright and available on Wikimedia. Published under a Creative Commons licence.