A Lighthouse in Plastic

I never learned how to close doors 

without checking if someone’s running to catch them. 

It’s a habit like apologizing to furniture,

 or holding my breath before saying something that might unravel me.

There’s a little blue chair outside her door.

 Not for decoration. 

Not for symmetry.

 It just is like the moon, 

or forgiveness, 

or the kind of silence that holds your name without needing to speak it.

It’s plastic, sun-faded, 

the kind made for toddlers and fairy tales, 

but to me, it's a lighthouse in a neighborhood of forgettable porches.

 I’ve gotten lost more times than I care to admit, 

but I always find her house by that chair. 

That ridiculous, perfect little chair.

 Like it’s waving at me a child’s version of a flare gun.

It’s chipped at the edges,

 like it tried to cradle too many summers in its lap and never quite let go. 

It’s seen more sunsets than people lately,

 gathering dust like soft confessions left too long on a windowsill.

It’s the kind of blue that only lives in childhood memories 

and ocean water from postcards

 too bright to be real,

 too soft to forget.

 But this chair is worn like a grandmother’s laugh 

warm, creaky, unapologetically familiar. 

It groans in the mornings 

like it remembers every goodbye that didn’t know it was one, 

every hello that came back wearing a different face.

She had a way of existing

 like background music in a movie you didn’t know you were in

 until the soundtrack changed. 

She brewed coffee like it was an apology 

and touched my shoulder like a question she was afraid to ask. 

She always looked like she was about to say something

 but swallowed it like a stone.

 Her care was a half-finished sentence

 and I spent entire afternoons trying to read the punctuation in her silences.

She could read my moods before I could name them. 

Slipped “Are you okay?” 

between cups and playlists,

 like turning the volume down 

without drawing attention to the noise.

She loved gently 

but her silences sometimes screamed. 

There were nights she looked at me like I was stardust

 and mornings she looked at me like a math problem 

she no longer had the energy to solve.

I think some kinds of love

live in the places we forget to sweep 

in objects that never ask us to explain ourselves,

 only to arrive.

Sometimes she looks at me like I am already gone.

 And I haven’t stopped thinking about that.

Some evenings, when she’s inside,

 and the lights spill warm behind the curtain,

 I still glance at that little blue chair that quiet witness,

 that unblinking compass, that absurd, sacred beacon

 like it might whisper who she’s missing now. 

Maybe it’s me. Maybe it never was.

The last time I left,

 I almost turned back just to sit in it

 to leave something behind

 a breath caught in the plastic, 

a note resting like a ghost, 

a memory she’d have to stumble over on her way out.

But I didn’t.

I walked away. And the chair stayed 

still blue, still absurd, still quiet, still waiting.

The chair didn’t say it,

 but I heard it anyway

 You are allowed to leave.

 And you are allowed to come back.

 We kept the light on.