Consider the Chair

I’m not sure when it appeared. One day it wasn’t there and the next, there it was. There’s not much that sticks out to me while I ride down the same highway every day. The side of the road and the median seem to cave in and create a void that takes me from one end to the other. Now though, that void has been ruptured. There’s a broken chair on the side of the road.

Chairs break all of the time, it’s not special. Neither is this one. But each day since its appearance, I look for it while I speed right by. It’s as if it were a mile marker or something, signaling that my destination is near. The chair is wooden and looks like it’s from a dinner table set. It’s missing its two back legs and it sits face-down with the remaining legs jutting into the air. Sometimes I like to think it’s waving to me.

Over time, the chair has picked up a lot of the highway’s trash. Plastic bags, takeout containers, and cardboard, all pile around its base (or are wrapped in its upward legs, in the case of the bags). I imagine that this pile will continue to grow, and soon it will look like a person. Maybe someone would pull over for it then.

I think about this chair a lot. I’m not quite sure why, there’s nothing out of the ordinary with it. It’s been discarded like all of the garbage it collects. Yet, I find myself wondering how it got there and what will come of it. Did someone throw it out the window while driving? Did it fall out of the back of a moving truck? Will someone come back for it? Will someone break its remaining legs?

Why does it matter?

I wrote a haiku about that chair on the highway, I hope you all enjoy: