Nina Puro: As Easy as Pulling Teeth from Babies
How to describe a year lost in static, a decade spent in sheets? I stood for a long time by the window deciding get dressed or jump. Eventually, I got dressed. The day churned on. Life’s like that. We try to get dressed, and do not speak of our trial later, when we are dressed and have sailed into the world, grinning. We wear the smartest clothes we can. The ghosts press themselves between the folds, into the corners of our mouths. Some ghosts are boats and some are swans. Some ghosts are drunk and some are sober. Some ghosts are burning buildings and some are frozen girls. You could clasp the ragged elbow of a ghost and go almost anywhere, unblinking. You could decide to jump but not fall. All the people you’ve ever loved would come rushing at you, just like that. Their gilded hands would knife right through you. You could stay standing by the window, ajar, gone agog. You could stay there forever, or at least a long time. The day would keep clambering along either way, unspooling with or without you.
NINA PURO’s work is forthcoming or recently appeared in cream city review, Harpur Palate, Indiana Review, Jellyfish, Pleiades, Third Coast, and other places. She has a forthcoming chapbook, Two Truths & a Lie (dancing girl press), lives in Brooklyn, and works as the publicist for Persea Books.
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