A perfect chair
is one with broken legs:
function becomes all the more
apparent, all the more precarious
in the sudden face of need.
The hollow curve
of a chair’s back completes
positions of authority and subservience;
chairs find purpose
in empty rooms.
When perfect chairs gather
I listen to their shattered histories,
how they lost all sensation from the waist
down
and regained it after dropping
to the floor.
Time tilts our lives into place,
and like perfectly broken chairs
we must not stop, we cannot stop trying
to stand with our backs proud
against the wall
even after our legs
have taught us to fall.