The carpet below is dirty, scummy. I imagine my feet sticking to it as I pass, the molecules of mixed grime grasping at my toes.
Many have travelled here, many have sat in this plastic chair. Clean people, dirty people, wealthy, poor. Their dust and dirt was left behind to testify to their existence. That is all they left. This is a sorry place to want to be remembered in, but I remember you. I do not know you, but I know what you are thinking.
You are thinking that you are not good enough, and then you think that you are too good. A battle between your consciences tears you apart until you decide not to think at all.
Then you try to satisfy your brokenness with your appearance. Many leather brief cases have lain on this seat, many scarf-clad wives with diamond rings have graced this chair. Many mothers have thought about their pregnancy weight that has refused to be shed since 1995. For some, their style says they do not care.
There was a rebel sitting in this seat, a man with a cause to not have one.
A man who decided he didn’t want to conform, so he conformed to not conform. He is fighting himself as the crumbs from his reuben sandwich falls down into the cracks between this seat and the next. He gets up and and old man sits down in my seat. He pulls out a hankerchief to stay the moist that is always present above his lip. A life he breathed, but he never lived. He tried for success and achieved his goal. Families have sat in this seat and filled the surrounding area with their laughter and then tension as the mother scolded the wrestling boys. The baby spilled milk down the side of the chair next to mine and it splashed up onto the back that is now supporting mine. A couple sits after, their flight is late and they celebrate their last night of vacation by splurging on a bottle of wine. The fiber of my chair soaks up the fumes of their attempt at joy.
They forget being here, but I remember.
I also remember their appearance as they shuffled off traipsing down to the gate together but alone. She wants romance, he wants respect, neither gives the opposite. She doesn’t understand why she takes off her ring at her desk when the young man sitting in the cubicle across from her smiles but I do. Her husband pleases himself when she is not there, but when she comes home he feels guilt not knowing she is doing the same.
What in the world is this life?
The thing behind you the thing you that you look to to look forward to recognize as something that you probably will never achieve. This chair, its rigid plasticity, what is it? It is molecules they are moving, this world is moving just like them. It is all molecules, but why do I feel like I want something more something to grasp that is not moving? My voice, it’s silent, but I am screaming, I am quietly protesting to all that I know; all I feel is anti-establishment, but not the typical—it is anti-everything. Because everything I once felt, I remember; but I know I will never be in this place in this chair, again and this enlightened thought will vaporize, into nothing.
Or will it?
