Anniversary

By Auriah Jordan-Smith

I became the chair. I had been sitting there for however long, I suppose long enough that I’d sunk into it. I became the chair. Being a chair is peaceful. No end and no beginning. No nagging chores or parents who ask why you’ve been still since dinner. Just fabric and foam. Collecting a thin film of dust every day. Sitting by the hutch, by the--

I’m a chair. I’m not supposed to look over there. Chairs don’t speak or have eyes or think or feel.

Well. Some chairs speak. Case in point.

But instead, I’ll look out the window. Green swishing and swaying, blurs of scarlet emerald cobalt swooping from green to green, blinding gold highlighting dew drops on the small ground greens, rich brown wood planks water-soaked and heavy. Life is springing up all around me in the outside world, but something is tapping on the window. Tapping, saying, hello, did you forget?

A leash.

And I am yanked back into my body of skin and bones, flesh and blood, eyes that see and ears that hear and a heart that pumps some wretched poison throughout. More greenery and days of full sun and barking and family and snow and clay paw prints and lizards and a calendar and the beach and fur and screaming and laughter and love and so many tears I CAN’T DO THIS ANYMORE!

I can’t.

He licked the salt off of my face and our hands and understood very little of the treat. He’s so keyed up that he doesn’t want to lie down. He did. He stared up at me with those brown eyes, ever so human, as the poison forced itself into his bloodstream. He was shaking and wondered why all of a sudden he was so tired. He looks at me. He looked at us. His heartbeat slows and rests his head at last on my hand. His eyes do not fully shut. They never did.

Breathe.

I again try looking out the window to the small ground greens and itty bitty bugs that crawl within and the scarlet emerald cobalts who feast on the swishing greens, but I can’t any longer without remembering who lived there before.

My darling.

By Auriah Jordan-Smith