Trigger Warning

Today I intended to begin to write.

Stories are waiting like distant thunderstorms

grumbling and flickering on the grey horizon

and there are emails and introductions

and a book, a whole damn book

about a country and a journey and belief

I’m here to write.

I made a chair.

I opened a cardboard box with a blade

(I assembled the blade)

removed the parts, carried them, carefully, up the stairs.

‘Functional seating for today’s workplace’

I pressed five casters into the base,

learned that they press in with a most satisfying pop.

Attached the armrests with the screws,

puzzling over the left and the right of it,

the screws not being what they should be

as described in the instructions. And then the base

beneath the seat,

which attached with six 40 mm screws (that were

puzzlingly six 45 mm screws).

Then the headpiece to the chairback,

the chairback to the seat, which is where the problems start

as the middle screw on either side declines

to penetrate and thread.

This all takes time. Orson Welles is Harry Lime

on the old radio as I assemble my chair. Orson meets a dame

and a crooked fortune-teller, and a fat man,

and a New York gang boss in exile,

and has slept with the dame, solved the mystery,

read the script

and pocketed the money

before I have assembled my chair.

Making a book is a little like making a chair.

Perhaps it ought to come with warnings,

like the chair instructions.

A folded piece of paper slipped into each copy,

warning us:

‘Only for one person at a time.’

‘Do not use as a stool or a stepladder.’

‘Failure to follow these warnings can result in serious injury.’

One day I will write another book, and when I’m done

I will climb it,

like a stool or a stepladder,

or a high old wooden ladder propped against the side of a plum tree,

in the autumn,

and I will be gone.

But for now I shall follow these warnings,

and finish making the chair.