We sat in the same chair dad did And tried to keep it warm the same way he did For the kids we’d never have Because the winters seemed colder Than they once did And the sun seemed to favor other towns Instead of ours And dad said the chair was the only thing he’d ever loved When he died But sometimes we found light elsewhere In screaming flesh Or wood and string Or the hook beckoning something to feed Or the destruction of will to leave Or dissolving self into inanimate objects Because the threads of the chair Needed our weight And our audience craved our failure Because both provisions were tradition Because someday we’d tell someone That we loved the chair too Even though we didn’t