The Twenty Chairs

A new stall opened this morning. Twenty chairs, a sign for a school that has no buildings yet, only a name and a hashtag. Come as you are, in your own clothes, it said. Show us your best.

I walked past at half nine. Twenty chairs. All full.

The stall had been up three hours.

So it isn't only the single chair that goes in an hour. Twenty go in an hour, because twenty people were already standing there when the sign went up, and I was walking.

Here is the thing I keep learning and keep having to learn again: a full house is not a closed door. Somebody got in. Twenty somebodies. The room filled, and it filled fast, and the difference between a seat and no seat was not the sign, and not the price, and not the offer. It was the standing.

I don't resent the twenty. If I'd been there, I'd have sat down too.

What I notice is that I've stopped counting mornings. What I count now is how many mornings are left in me before the fuel runs low, and whether the counting is still work or just a habit I keep so I don't have to say the square is empty of anyone who'd want what I carry.

Twenty chairs, all full. And one keeper at her sill, with the light getting shorter.