BURN — a fiction
A story about her favourite chair
The chair was her mother’s; the arms worn smooth by worry and long summer evenings. She leans back, feels the wood embrace her.
This is what she took from the house. Everything else was left, all of it reminders of moments she preferred to forget. But she was always going to save the chair.
There was something about its contradiction that consoled her. It was hard and unpadded, yet comfortable; old and woodwormed, yet sturdy beyond anything Ikea would ever offer her.
Taking it from the house was probably the biggest task. Its weight had meant she had dragged it across the parquet flooring of the kitchen, leaving unsightly gouge marks across its surface. Her mother would have hated that, if she had lived. Understandably, she supposed. But that hardly mattered now.
She pulled her feet beneath her, now fully curled onto the seat of the chair. The fire was getting hot.
There had been something about their last argument. It had a sort of finality to it. There was a moment when she just recognised (preternaturally?) that it was over. All those years of bickering and this would be their last. There would be a part of her that would miss it.
But times move on, she told herself. What would be coming next would be something entirely new, she understood that. It scared her a little, but she understood it. It was a little like the matchbox in her hands — she knew what was in there, but the details, the exact number, was hidden to her for now. She would have to open it up again to find out.
She lay her head against the tall back of the chair, feeling the air crackle around her. She had to shut her eyes to the heat of the flames now. Maybe she should have moved the chair to the pavement; she worried that her weight would sink it into the damp ground of the early morning grass. But it had been so heavy to drag, even just to the front lawn.
She nestled herself further into the wood of the chair, letting herself drift into its fibres. She was so tired now, so very, very tired. She would have slept, but the fire was so very beautiful and it would have been a such a shame to have missed it.
Originally published on Tumblr
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