Three Chairs

written by Narinder on the day she moved three old cane chairs into her new and empty apartment in Maine. a place she didn’t see coming.

Three Chairs

They saw three empty chairs where I saw three invitations.
I sat them one next to the other in the empty parlor.
Sunlight backlit the chairs turning them into humble thrones.

In the first chair, a grey dress heavy with grief appeared.
Its skirts fell over the sides of the seat, and at the hems
I saw there were red embroidered keys.

I kneeled before the chair and ran my fingers over the tattered bodice,
sticking my fingers through the holes in the lace.
The dress swelled and relaxed as though it was breathing.
I laid my head on its lap and began daydreaming.

There I heard a distant piano playing a requiem for lost dreams.
I saw a white wooden door closing. Then I saw that the keyhole was weeping.
From under the door a small violet moth came. I held out my hand.
It spun around in circles in my palm with the distant piano’s song.

When the song ended, the little thing took a deep bow to me.
As I gasped at the magical sight, I accidently inhaled the little bug.
It went into my throat and whispered through my lips,
“Tell your sad stories too.”, and then I coughed and out they flew.

When I came to, the dress was gone,
but from the second chair something caught my eye.
As I turned to see what was there, two little brown penny loafer shoes
dangled in front of the seat. As I reached for them, a penny fell
from each of their eyes. “1976” the pennies were stamped.
I sat the two cents on the chair, then slid my hands into the shoes.

All around the room, crawling on my knees, I tap danced the shoes
with my hands. And as the shoes clicked and shuffled, I remembered one of my favorite childhood melodies,
“Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.”
When I Burt Bacharached taps from the loafers,
little puddles of water appeared on the parlor floor all around me.
At first, I didn’t appreciate the mess, but then I realized
that I was “never gonna stop the rain by complaining.”

My hands in the loafers went full steam ahead.
They tapped and perfectly smacked the water.
I could see in the puddles dotting the parlor floor reflections of my
faces from now all the way back to age 4. Every single reflection of my faces
was mouthing the same thing at me. I couldn’t really read my lips, blurred by the water. It was frustrating, so I’d just keep tap dancing the shoes with my hands.
But when I saw the face of my thirteen year old self, I paused.
She really wanted to be heard but nobody was listening. I paid attention.
I leaned in close to the reflection of my thirteen year old self’s face and watched her lips say with enunciation,“Narinder, your imagination is infinite.”
I sat back on my heels. ”Aha!” I thought to myself.
(I’ve been trying to wrap my head around this my entire life.)

As I placed the shoes under the second chair, the puddles dried up in one quick etheric slurp.
Then, holy sight! From the third chair a rose popped up!
Then another rose and another rose!
From the center of the chair a bunch of pink roses came up. Pop. Pop. Pop.

As each pink rose appeared, I heard the sound of a bell ringing a new name.
One ding for each of the people that I’ve held into the Great Sleep.

Miss Sarah, ding, Miss Mattie, ding, Rosaria, Mary Ann, Gary, ding ding ding.
More pink roses, more bells ringing names. My eyes widened and my heart fluttered with butterflies at the sight and sounds and remembering.

Then red roses came. Now pink and red roses were spilling out all over the floor!
Each red rose came with the sound of a harp string singing the names of the death midwives I’ve midwifed into death midwifery.
The red roses, the harp strings, their names.
Dmmm, Schara, Dmmm, Hannah, Dmmm, Seraphina, Dmmm, Spencer, Dmmm and on and on. Dmmm. Dmmm. Dmmm.
Red roses, harps, pink roses, bells, death midwives and the dead.
All around the parlor floor, around the three chairs pink and red roses came.

Then, as if it couldn’t get any more beautiful, lo and behold,
yellow roses began to appear! But this time, instead of roses coming one by one,
yellow roses were coming in by the dozens!
A yellow rose for each of the hearts my apprentices have touched and will touch with their death midwifery.
Hundreds over hundreds of yellow roses filled the room as the harp and bell continued to sing. Roses piled up so deeply that I couldn’t see
the three chairs.

I had to stand up.
I was up to my neck in roses.
The fragrance of it all, an aphrodisiac for Goddesses,
blurred my vision with tears.
I lifted my arms, parting the roses with my hands,
feeling my way towards the windows as more roses came.
Thousands of yellow roses!
I opened the windows and lifted the screens.
The roses spilled out over the sills
into the garden and across the boulevard.
I laughed with glee at this miracle
as I stuck my head out through the window and yelled
to the sky, “Look, God, look at what you did with me! Thank you!”
Roses. Bells. Harps. Gratitude.

But just as I shouted “thank you” - the roses vanished
and the bell and harp stopped.
The sounds of traffic on the boulevard came again.
A fly buzzed and banged up against the window frame.
Behind me on the floor, my dog stood up to shake his head,
rattling his noisy dog tags, then curled up quietly to sleep.

I closed the window and turned to see
the three old cane chairs sitting empty in a halo of silence.
One for my grief. One for my imagination. And one for my death midwifery.

If you were sat with three empty chairs, what would come to sit with you?

- Narinder

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Sliding an invitation here to my upcoming workshop. Only a few chairs left.