love

Surfaces

Artwork by Lonneke van der Palen via Sleek Magazine

Like the wooden table worn
smooth with years of use
I visited you, decorated you,
laughed over you, leaned on you,
ran my hand over the nicks and grooves of you.
I overlooked you, I needed you,
I draped my weight upon you.
Like the table, you stood solid.
Dependable, indifferent.

I should break you into firewood,
sell you for something glass.
Transparency is modern,
even if it leaves fingerprints like reminders
and comes smooth from factory,
not memory.

I could buy a plastic folding
and have it sit rickety,
hollow when knocked,
where the old oakwood left
imprints on the pretty carpet.
I could want you cheap,
nothing to consider or care for,
easy to clean, to fix,
to stash away and bring out for company,
to discard.

But maybe I’ll scrap the table altogether,
sit on the floor unsupported,
in the too-empty
defamiliarized space;
The room will look bigger
and from the carpet the windows will be taller,
brighter, and viewed from below they will show only the sky.

I’ll pretend you were never there,
try not to lean back
absent minded, absent table leg I’ll keep leaning
until my back rests on the carpet
and I look at the chairs, who look
at each other expectant, crowded
yet purposeless and incomplete.

The carpet is softer than my solid, lovely
wooden table, more interesting to run my fingers through,
willing to support my frame
as my gaze,
unencumbered by the absent table’s dark underbelly
and tangled mess of legs,
floats up to the sunlit ceiling.

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Francesca von Krauland is a Miami-born Cuban and Austrian writer. She is a lover of cappuccinos, cats, and conversations that go on for hours.

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