The Vacant Chair
- Grace Davies - poetry
- Aug 21, 2020
- 2 min read
A vacant chair where she once sat. Sat and laughed and welcomed the unwelcomeable. Dark oak table, candles down the middle and a floral centrepiece, deep purples, perfectly arranged, just as she wanted. Details are important if perfection is to be maintained. You’d think from this that she was cold, distant, had a perfect showroom house. You could not have been more wrong. Oily engines, muddy boots, dirty paws, small painted hands all travelled through that room and exited via the back door, red and like a stable in style, onto the next part of their lives. Leaving her behind, who’d loved them, sacrificed for them, poured herself into them. They moved forward and left her standing, there by the coffee table, but not forgotten, never forgotten. She’d be there until they needed her, again and again and again, until she wasn’t. It didn’t seem like it could be real. It wasn’t sudden. Three long years of pain and misery and fighting the shock of the last days left us numb and there was relief that she was at peace now. Denial of reality was strong, but the vacant chair remained, where she should have been, eating and laughing and loving. The reminders remain years on, the Easter Tree, still standing, its branches adorned with delicately painted eggs and some not so delicately painted, but treasured just the same. Treasured for the small hands who had made them. Her purple and lime green couch, chosen in those last months, a splash of life, a determined fuck you to death. Not that she’d have ever used that kind of language. Death came all the same, it ate her up inside, until only a shell remained and then nothing, nothing except a vacant chair.
This poem will feature in my soon to be released poetry book - Ghost Words
My debut poetry book - Shadows of the Invisible - A Journey Into Identity, is currently available on amazon - free on Kindle Unlimited - also available in paperback - click on the link below for this evocative poetry collection.
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