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Ghost Story
- Ohio University Press
- Chapter
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Ghost Story By the time said country gets the bomb my infant son will read the news. For now I merely crackle each page of the paper before him, if only to shake myself from reality. How often this boy (descendent of said country) saves me from terrifying thoughts of the future. Just yesterday while washing a month’s worth of laundry I became a magician, pulling sheets upon sheets from a single container, as if to trick him into believing that things are eternal. Then when I laid his two-foot-tall body upon a sea of freshly dried clothes, he showed me how little we matter, enshrouding himself in a white cotton sheet for his mock-Muslim burial. I remembered the morning’s story and he began shaking himself free. Tiny ghost of the symbolic, insistent snickerdoodle intent on making life meaningful, go forth in the world with your blankness, cover that which becomes too scary to see, take back your first word as soon as it’s spoken, and so haunt the world as a prophet of innocence. 3 You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. ...