in the parlour

I went all around the house and counted every single chair and every seating space on every couch and every love seat. Forty-one people could come to visit me, and you’d all have a place to sit.

I don’t have a living room. I have a parlour. In the parlour alone there was seating for eight. When am I ever going to have seven people at once visiting me in Gaspereau Forks, New Brunswick? Not any time soon. I moved most of that shit out of there. Now I have a comfy chair for reading and a couch for sprawling out on.

In the evenings I wrap a large comforter around my shoulders and shuffle around the house like an old person.

There is a chandelier that hangs from the ceiling in the parlour. Whenever I get up from the couch, I pick up the comforter and fling it around my shoulders. The flying blanket has a tendency to dislodge any number of tinkling crystal teardrops from the chandelier.

The glassy decorations fall to the floor at my feet. The thing is: when I try to put them back, I can never find any space for them on the chandelier. I have concluded that this chandelier regenerates itself.

This chandelier came from the bottom of the ocean.

Earlier today I knocked off another one of the glass teardrops. This one fell to the carpet and broke open in a cloud of electrons. The electrons flew up to buzz around and around my head like a swarm of angry bees.

I could feel myself becoming polarized. I panicked and ran out onto the sun porch. Still in my sock feet, I opened the front door and ran across the snow-covered lawn. When I reached the driveway I collapsed in the snow.

After a while the sun came out. One by one the electrons began drifting away from my prone body.

Now I know what eternity feels like.

3 thoughts on “in the parlour

Comments are closed.