Sitting on What Stands, Standing on What Sits

A horse and a chair meet where the bridge begins to sag, each claiming expertise in being crossed.

The horse says a bridge is just a stretched-out path with stage fright— a thing that trembles because it knows you’re watching. A sentence, it says, is no different: step onto the first word and you’re already committed to whatever waits on the far bank.

The chair objects. A bridge holds you only in transit; a chair holds you in place. Yet both, it admits, creak under the stories people bring to them. A sentence, too, creaks— especially in the middle, where the weight shifts and the truth threatens to show through.

They argue about load limits, run-ons, splinters. About which fails first: a bridge missing a plank or a sentence missing its verb.

By dusk the horse has chewed a railing down to allegory. The chair has tightened its joints, pretending not to wobble.

They agree on only one thing: everything collapses eventually, especially the parts meant to carry us over.