Prompt: Another World, Another Time.
Grandma’s Old Red Chair
She is tattered and torn.
Her springs are showing through.
She has holes from cigarette burns.
But she still has some safe spaces.
Some beautiful, unworn places.
She sits strong and encapsulating.
She gives off the sense of a guardian and protector.
A secret keeper from one mother to another.
She sits through our pain. Holds our shame.
She’s the color of blood.
She circulates life through the first layer she holds and passes it up and through to small bottoms pouring out in smiles and laughter.
She catches tears and cuddles.
Wraps her arms around grief.
Holding every voice while she has none.
She feels like love.
Could love be as simple and static as this chair?
Inanimate yet holding a heart that beats and bleeds.
Do the hearts she holds give her life?
Pouring and pumping through the mediocre and the normal while never forgetting the magnificent and melancholic.
Beating and bleeding for the child when she first realizes she can’t make someone love her.
Beating and bleeding for a husband as he says goodbye to his wife as she takes her last breath.
Beating and bleeding for the senseless violence that disrupts her community.
This old red chair, an object that has outlasted several generations, sits silently and holds and catches all of these things.
She surrenders to stillness just to absorb and comfort.
She is a favorite.
I wonder how many more of my generations she will hold.
