Empty Chairs

Empty Chairs


Empty chairs sit around an empty waiting room lobby.
Different colored chairs.
Some teal, others purple.
Many having a haphazard flower print
that begins that little twinge in the mind
of an oncoming headache.

These empty chairs sit silent for now.
But time holds the many different conversations
shared in them by “now ghosts.”
At least ghosts to us anyway.
Real people, once sitting here in these chairs communing,
now gone.

And what would these chairs say to us if they could speak?
What conversations from these “now ghost” people
would these chairs share?
Would they share all of them?
That would take forever to listen to!
But they would.
Sure they would.
After all, it is all only a matter of time.

Maybe these two empty chairs here recently sat an elderly couple
still holding hands.
Or perhaps that chair over there once sat a fat man with a blue ball cap on
talking on his cell phone.
That purple chair and the one next to it sat a mother with her little girl
crying from a broken arm and her daddy in the next chair over, comforting her.

Now these are all “ghosts” lost in time.
Their conversations now trail off to wherever such conversations go.
Lost in a sense.
Well, lost to us anyway.
Who knows if someone may still hear the whispering of their words.

The chair you are sitting in right now, your chair,
it holds your story right now,
after which, you too will become a “now ghost.”

Here comes a man now.
Let's watch as he takes a seat in the waiting room with us.
Let's smile back at him as he sits in his chair and his story unfolds,
his chair taking it all in.

--msl2022