The Extra Chair

“I am alone, I am alone, I am alone.”

-The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

“Sometimes I feel I am the only one who knows what’s going on”

-The Truman Show (1988)

Every square inch of my body, and every minute sparkles my soul, is made of the trunk of an ancient redwood tree. And the smell of coffee resonating from my body is eternal. Just to let my reader know, I was adorned with fresh white lilies today, as if their floral essence would fill the passerbys with euphoria.. To put an end to your curiosity, I am at a table at a  cafe near a highschool- the only one with a ‘single chair’. Throughout the 37 years of my quiet existence, I have seen many faces, though the years have erased a few. I have noticed something common among all those wanderers who chose to sit on the ‘single chair’, how loneliness has become ingrained in the human persona, like an ivy that has forgotten where the stone ends and its own green veins begin. 

Let me acquaint you with one of the souls that came my way. A highschool girl, with her carefully pleated skirt, the bright red ribbon on her hair, and that peach bag, but what was missing was the smile that had lost her eyes. Slowly, and steadily the whole cafe had started to fill with people. The cherry blossoms were in full bloom. With every single entry at the door, the girl looked up in search of a familiar face, someone who would come and ask about her well being, that’s what’s arcane in today’s world.

Then came the waiter, and the mundane script followed. She ordered a coffee and kept waiting. The nervous glint in her eye, the trembling hands, and that shaking leg hinted towards her being in a foreign place, and if my guess is correct she might have been from a foreign land, away from her homeland, waiting for her wings to finally take a shape, for her to fly in a boundless sky. 

But why was she lonely? And even if she was, why was her gaze shifting to every single table, as if one of her groups from school, who were laughing their hearts out, would call her to join? What makes me curious is what keeps humans going, they run each morning, with nothing in their hands at night, but they still have resilience to wake up the next day, while all they have is themselves at the end of the day. As I was deliberating, her phone rang.

Quiet a euphoric tune, for a girl this gloomy, but does a table have the capacity to judge? Her mother and sisters were on the other side, all giggles and smiles, asking if she was fine, and with her friends, she smiled. Could they spot the smile she was faking? I still think her mother saw the water filling up her eyes. Loneliness can make you cry at unprecedented times. Even if nothing triggering has happened at that moment, all the realization can hit at once, sitting on a table with a single chair, “8 million people and still no one?”