Two Empty Chairs
Poem by: Ruba Khalid
Two Empty Chairs
They said:
Two seats. Parents only.
As if absence were a scheduling error,
as if love came with a guest list.
.
I held the message the way one holds glass—
Careful not to bleed in public.
The sentence itself had a mouth.
It did not whisper.
It shouted at me in every language I know,
and in the ones I was never taught:
You are an orphan.
It shouted until the walls understood.
.
I imagined my mother sitting in the front row of my life,
her hands folded around my name,
her eyes saying I knew you would arrive here.
She is very good at not being here.
She has practiced for years.
.
The second chair waits for a father who tightens the light in rooms,
who calls the sun too much,
who confuses warning with care.
He would not come anyway.
Absence has always been punctual.
.
“Two seats. Parents only.”
As if everyone’s parents are alive.
As if everyone’s parents are kind.
As if fathers don’t dim lights.
As if absence isn’t loud—
louder than applause,
louder than halls,
louder than my own voice when I try to call them back.
The chairs do not forgive.
They remember.
.
They say this is success.
A hall. A microphone. Applause measured in claps.
But success, for me,
is surviving long enough to need witnesses.
.
This was mother-shaped grief
colliding with achievement-shaped joy—
two bodies rushing toward each other
with no intention of surviving the impact.
There is no mother to clap.
No soft thunder of pride
breaking at the sound of my name.
.
I have written my way out of silence,
carried my grief like a passport,
crossed days that wanted me smaller.
.
Still—
on the day my name is said aloud,
there will be no one who first taught me how to say it.
.
So I will place my mother in the space between breaths,
where pride lives without a body.
I will seat myself beside myself,
and I will stay.
.
If there are only two chairs,
let them be empty.
Let them learn what it means to miss
something irreversible.
Ruba Khalid.
The 27th of Jan 2026
This is just so stunningly beautiful. Moving forward without a parent to witness is so strange and you’ve captured that so gorgeously. Such a stirring in my heart, thank you.
Ruba, the raw realness of your writing, the humanity, the bones and grit of it, the absences palpable… and, as you say, you write. oh please keep writing. this world needs your words, your heart, your depth, your presence. I need them. thank you.