For her, heaven is a four-legged vessel of relinquished valiance.
It is her empyrean tangency of succouring upholstery. A blissful domain. A three-dimensional ode to joy. A nesting home for the weary, weatherworn, and barely fully-fledged person, not quite assimilated to the woes of everyday adult life. Sinking into the comforting crimson caress, she can let go of anything.
She glances at the table beside her, bearing a specifically cluttered repository of paraphernalia, nonsensical to anybody but her. The fire crackles in the hearth, warming one side of her face, while the other is pressed so closely against the plush surface of the chair that she and it may as well be a singular conjoined entity.
This is her queendom of peace; here, this landscape of leather and velvet by the flickering fire. Her realm of chaos and belonging, of friendship and quarrel, of earthy musk, of warmth and of love. Only she knows the divine depths of its simplicity.
This is Elysium, she thinks. It must be. And if it isn’t, then any paradise in any world can hardly be better than this.
This is all she needs. And it will continue to be, more so then, once she is again forced to leave it and venture out into the hell that is daylight.
The red armchair is her friend, her home and her muse. It is everything to her.
© Patrick Boey 2023. All rights reserved.