the chairman

Packing up his house was a sensation of numbness. There was a stinging in my eye but no tears were left to come out. Everything fits into perfect little boxes. The vinyls, his cigarette reeking flannels, the pictures of us as kids, all the memories of the good times. Perfect little boxes. Except the chair.

His chair.

My dad had died a month ago from the blackness of his lungs metastasizing. I was the sibling tasked with packing up his home that sat on the bay. My favorite place. I lived with him all throughout high school.

My mother was unfit to be my mother. She had all the love for the other kids.

I lifted this god awful chair that for some reason meant the world to my dad. He built it when he was a kid. You could tell the withering wood structure was the product of time and a child’s hand. I carried it out to the trash. Not even Goodwill wanted it. I flipped it over and saw something that brought me to my knees.

It’s going to be okay

etched into the bottom where he knew only I’d find it. 

Over the years the chair fell apart, but the bottom of the chair hung on my wall awkwardly until my own black lungs metastasized. Like father, like daughter.