you can't sit here 

the chairs say do not sit here
& so i keep moving down a hallway of chairs.
there has got be one at least that lets me.

what photographs do you make up for yourself?
i pretend we have an picture of me
sleeping inside the spearmint bush.

i talk to chairs. i tell them
i'm a mostly sad person. someone should have
at least put them in some kind of order 

instead of just leaving them strewn about.
someone could trip. i could trip. 
there should be an image of 

my brother & i standing waist-deep 
in the snow after that one storm when
furniture fell from the sky &

broke on the ground: a sofa, a dining table
& so many sets of chairs. him & i 
playing with scrap pieces to write our names

in the layer of white. do you ever
forget your name? the chairs insist that 
it's not a good time-- that they don't want

visitors. i explain to the chairs that this
is my house as far as i know. they chatter.
my chairs have knees that buckle.

i want to go back & hire a photographer
to stand in the corner of the living room 
& ask us to hold still. i tell a chair

that i'm going to sit anyway & it shrieks
so i say okay okay i understand
even though i don't understand. 

there are a lot of moments i've forgotten.
my brother filled a car with broken chair pieces
& drove off someone. my house where i grew up

is now full of clutter & i don't know
how it got like this. i want to move somewhere
the ocean is within sight but then again

the ocean is closer each day. sometimes it
whispers through the windows & floods
the kitchen & the halls. all the chairs drowning

& begging me never to touch them. if i were a chair
i would hold a human up. i think of those afternoons
where my dad would ask me to be 

an ottoman. put his feet up on my back. 
i wish there was a photograph-- i can feel it
in my fingers. i loved it. i loved it. 

the weight of his limbs on my spine.
the knowledge that my frame could be useful.
a wonderful piece of furniture. a camera

only in the back of my throat
snapping photographs & letting me swallow them
as they printed. the chairs kneel for sleep.

the night comes without warning & so 
i lay down with them. i pray for a body of
wood. i pray the ocean doesn't leak.