The American Chair.

I am not documented by my thoughts
but by touch,
from half-seen bodies and the crawling
hands of a toddler, who has only been
on shorelines when radioactive crabs
would claw at his kneecaps.

People don't sit in me, stories do,
until I am woven enough so that
my veins are intermixed with
imaginations
and mostly- pride.

They have survived...
the orphaned woman opening and closing
a scratched business card of a
back alley abortionist,
the twenty-two year-old man believing
he's matter for the devil to deal with
and that he'll keep dreaming of suicide
as if it's a romance he craves,
the booksmart father studying
how to woe his wife like he did almost
forty years back,
the diseased mother fighting the temptation
to purge her memories of world war and
a childhood she became enslaved by.

They all rock back and forth,
dangerously, for I have no flexibility
when night is out of teacups to
balance on my shoulder.

Yet I will survive.

Two bodies won't make peace,
but maybe if you awake restless in the middle
of a nightmare serenading your life,
you can find me
and feel the warmth of a tawny pattern
that has held so many American hearts-

and this time, you will not be controlled,
you will recapture your own dignity.

-
Written 7/5/13 @ 2:55 AM
Found a prompt on tumblr saying to tell the story from "Memoirs of an American Chair" and this inspired me, especially thinking of Independence Day. Thanks for reading!