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Poetry

Chair Ontology

by Dylan Skurka

Every day,
like every other
before,
we all wait…
I’ve watched
the blue paint on the wall
dry for centuries,
or days.
It all feels the same.
The creaking bed
occupied by
phantom fragments
and meandering houseflies.
Wooden desk,
my best friend
in this still-frame
musky life,
forever offers our master
perfumes he’ll never use,
a glass cup of water
he’ll never drink.
But I sit –
or stand? –
the bleakest
of these forlorn remnants.

Is a chair a chair
if no one sits in it
anymore?

Dylan Skurka is a Toronto-based educator, writer, and thinker.