Empty Chairs And Empty Tables...

Yet again finding inspiration on my regular walks – a house that was once crammed full of personal items is now sadly deserted, with only the for sale board planted like a conquering flag in the front garden.

As I walked into the house of my long-ago childhood it felt for a moment as if the fabric of the building had been shifted. It seemed to me that the rooms had moved, the corridors changed, as if the house was a giant Rubik’s Cube that someone had been playing with, before puzzled and defeated they had set it back down completely altered. Even as I searched through the memories of this place, coloured sepia by the photographs that captured them, I could not quite fix in my head how the rooms ought to have been.

I went through the first door I came to on my left. There was no reason to choose that door. There was no moment of sudden insight and clarity. It, like all the others, was a blank canvas to me. The peeling, yellowed-paint was merely a sad testament to the passage of time. The catch had not been fully clicked into place and the door opened almost eagerly with only the slightest touch.

The room was long though not especially wide and at the far end there was a pair of large glass doors. They looked like a trick of the eye, an illusion to make the room appear longer. The neat rectangle of grass outside became the natural extension of the neat rectangular room. The room was entirely empty perhaps explaining why my first impression was purely of rectangular proportion. There was no furniture to claim the empty walls and floors as their own. There were none of the trinkets, pictures or ornaments that I know had once covered every available surface. Their remembered presence, and their absence now, only emphasised the complete emptiness of the room.

Did I play on this floor at the feet of grown-ups? I cannot remember this room specifically, but the house had always seemed to me like a museum; a grand collection of memories and tokens. Time, like a thief, had stolen those memories and the items these rooms used to contain. Perhaps I am the only one left who can feel that loss and emptiness. An empty chair is only an empty chair if you have the expectation that someone should be sitting there and discover that they are not.

A stray beam of sunlight filtered through the smeared windows of the room. For that moment the room was brilliant gold, the air filled with shimmering glitter and something of the past seemed to return. The light mellowed and faded, however, as the clouds continued to pass in the outside world. The house returned to its faded glory, the dust hanging heavy and the rooms remaining empty.