Magpie Tales: Seat Taken

Is this seat taken? she asks, her hand resting lightly on the back rail of a simple wooden chair.

What about this one? she moves without moving to another.

The field is littered with them, chairs turned this way and that. Fog eats the edge of my periphery where still more stand skeletal within the grey. Hundreds. Thousands. I do not try to count, just follow her through their maze as she appears next to each. The grass is green but brittle, grinding under each step.

Damp with morning dew, my fingers slide the virgin surface of unused chairs.

What of this chair?

Wild and tangled, her hair is living fire tongues all speaking at once and not at all. Her dress plain, revealing nothing more than it needs. Bread fresh from the oven, butter melting atop, is how she smells.

I am home and laughter musics the air. Moms apron is covered in flour and she is
telling me to go out and play, the bread will be done soon and the kids are playing in the lot between the houses. Green grass. A white clothes line stretched between metal T-shaped poles. Robins egg blue paint peals. Chairs.

Three. Four. Five neighborhood kids and chairs. Music pours out the screened window to the next house. One blond girl in a billowy dress yells ok mom and they begin dancing round the chairs. We begin dancing round the chairs. More and more chairs are taken from the circle, now sat in by those that could not find one when the music stopped.

Can I have this seat?

The field of chairs is before me once more and her voice is breath on my lips, close enough to feel the shape of her body without needing to touch, though our fingers do on the back of one chair. Her eyes promise, silent compared to the chairs.

All possible futures, unfound yet there, topple in the concussion as our lips meet, none of them ever mattering again. And the music just keeps playing with no need to stop.

This is a Magpie Tale.