The Pink Armchair

 In my bedroom, there is an overstuffed pink armchair, fat and comfortable, hearty, 

Where I like to read. 

 Wrapped in a throw blanket, a paperback in my hands, I am content there. 

In my pink armchair, I can hear the front door open and close, the exclaims of hellos, 

The dogs' toes click-clacking on the hardwood. 

And in my pink armchair, in my room in the back of the house, 

Reading a novel, 

I can hear all that, and I know the world is waiting for me, 

But I stay. I stay right where I am, in a field hospital in France, 1917. 

In Jamaica, in a rambling pink villa, 1908. 

In the crook of a tree in  Samuel P. Taylor park, 1986. 

On a busy London street, 1925. 

I hear the door open and close, I hear the noises of a house on West Baltimore Avenue, Larkspur,  2013, but I don't want to leave my pink armchair and all the places it and a book can take me. 

There is a beautiful rich life that is calling me, calling me from the pink armchair, 

from the novels,the whispering pages, 

But that world is painful sometimes and frightening, and most of all uncertain. 

And my heart quickens and tightens at the thought of its gifts and its betrayals, 

its sensual offers and cold rejections. 

In a book, 

I am allowed the opportunity to go into someone's life, their private thoughts, their lowest moments, 

Without having to ask. 

I am a fly on the wall of their beautiful rich life, 

And I see and feel their triumphs and their falls. 

I want to stay with them, stay with them all. 

All the characters that taught me without ever knowing me how to love and hate and explore, 

Who showed me how to be proud and intelligent and joyful,

Who gave me the chance to  visit their existences. 

But there is a sadness in that, 

Because I must live too, 

For the pink armchair  is only good for so long. 

Someone has come to visit. 

I hear them say that they were in the neighborhood and thought they'd stop in after a hike, 

I hear my father tell them to come on in. 

I see them round the bend from the foyer, 

I see them from my open door, my pink armchair, 

And I see them see me, 

Wave hello. 

I wave back. 

I put down my book, 

pull the blanket off my knees. 

Straighten my hair. 

Enter West Baltimore Avenue, 2013, 

Into the beautiful, rich, wild, frightening, uncertain world.