Sitting on a Plastic Chair

So we come. We sit on these plastic stacking chairs
in a rough circle that lolls wide across the room
and in the weight of the air, there is a tangible presence.
Mothers, husbands, brothers and daughters;
we are breathing in the same loss and pain.
But there is more: lightness and warmth
A white candle. And the absence of bitter words.
It sounds a bit mechanical, when they say
“welcome”
But they mean it.

Of the fifteen or so men in the room, I fear a little coaxing
flattery and affection, and I could become infatuated
with any of at least seven or eight of them. Such is the cloying
of my need for affirmation, to be known, inside....
and known by someone who's been there. God!
That's pure opium. I scald my selfish junkie heart
avert my eyes, and hunch down to my lap to listen.
Droplets slip from my lashes and slide down my nose
splashing my knees. I watch them hit their fabric destination
dark little moons bleeding on a wine coloured background.

The person next to me is looking
sympathetic... unintrusive. I can sense
a kindly subtlety in their gaze.
Later, we will exchange three or four words, smile
and go our separate ways.
I am new and they know it takes time.

This diffidence is like air to me,
keeps me coming back to breathe again
in the security of a place where I am free
from demands to give more than I can afford.

I have been broke and kept on lending
I have crashed
watched the hapless meltdown of my economy.
Still, I kept lending and with a speculating love,
I kept my rates at zero.
There was no exit strategy, no sustainability
there was no protection from the wolves
and nobody had the sense to lock the door.
My heart was taken to the cleaners
and hung out to dry.

So I come. Sitting on a plastic chair.
Thirty-odd people all around me,
whose faces have become beautiful.
They are strangers in all but name
but the lines, the curve, the stretch of their brows carry
a story I have laboured with for a lifetime:
Promises. Panic. Loss. Elation. Compulsion. Guilt.
There is gentleness too.
It is to this gentleness I hesitantly cling.

One day I will be sitting on a plastic chair and
the itching will be tissue healing, broken bones fusing,
hungrily drawing on the calcium
of our experience, strength and hope.
It amazes me. All that hunger,
all those fractures, and there is enough to go round.
So we go around the circle
I shift and fidget on my plastic chair, uncomfortable,
numb, but grateful to be here.