The Chair

He crawls over to the chair, pulls himself up, and attempts to scale the edge. It’s too soft, too high. His Mom walks over to boost him up. This is his favorite place in the house. The soft, worn fabric that he can burrow into. He thrashes around, finding the perfect hollow where his body melts into the folds of the cushions. Grabbing the remote, he wildly pushes buttons - the chair responds, it’s motor shifting to match the control. He tosses and twists the remote around until he is tangled in the cord; this makes him laugh. It tethers him to the chair, as if he was somehow a part of it. He likes that feeling. It makes him feel solid, relaxed. The chair is a buoy, an anchor, a mooring. It's an ecosystem, a jungle gym, and a make-believe land where he rules. It's a tree house, where he is hiding out from an angry grizzly bear below. It's a cave, the mud around covered in cave spiders. It is his to control. He can shuffle and move and climb and laugh. He takes the chair on a ride through space and time. He travels to unknown worlds and galaxies. He steers it through Earth’s atmosphere, navigates through the frozen particles of Saturn’s rings and lets it putter through a milky pool of stars. He docks it in the blue gas of Neptune and explores the murky, transient terrain, He returns to Earth when he hears the beep of the microwave - a sure sign of dinner.