The Oakwood Chair

She sits by the pond in that creaking oakwood chair, and stares at the water, counts the ripples on its surface, and I wonder. I wonder if she can hear the crickets chirp, or if it's blended into the background like breathing or the feel of raven black hair covering your scalp and meditating there. Is it like clothes, a different color every day, maybe a different texture, or is it like skin, that onesie that's always too small, the one that you want to take off all the time? If she can see the fireflies bead her lonely strands of hair and light them up without that eerie sliver of moonlight interrupting their song. If she can feel the yellow-orange-white light comb her hair into rainbows and clouds, dress her up like the sky, plain but beautiful.


I wonder if she hears the wind chiming in the night, ting-a-ling-a-ling, the silver ghostwhispers that traverse the leaves when we aren't watching. I wonder if she tastes that new front of emotion, the one that'll drown us all if we don't smile. Maybe she knows that when the birds sing, the earth gets just a little bigger because it is laughing, that somewhere, a volcano erupts because its cheeks get red. Maybe she knows that the trees talk at night about her, say, oh, I hugged her yesterday, with two of my oldest hands, ones that years had roughened but taught how to love. 

I wonder if she knows that when she's counting those ripples, one-two-three, those loving arms are cut down, five-six-seven. I wonder if she knows that they never stop hugging her. They see their own reflection in the water and know that they've been put in the right place. They know that they're home.