find the illustrated version here

Reception Theory or How to Sit in an Office Chair

words by Autumn Royal

‘What I hide by my language, my body utters.’ — Roland Barthes

Before the telephone rings again we should touch

on the things that make her human in combination

with her ill-fitting clothes—a skirt too tight

around the waist and the jumper so loose the sleeves

drag along the tiled floor—the lamb she nurses

in her lap is surely a convincing marker that she

is what one would call a person and should be held—

in the office chair—as the individual who

owns the voice providing the etiquette of greeting

other people with a warm and welcoming hello—

pronounced clearly and with appropriate volume.

Water drips into an empty bucket as she inhales air

and exhales longing for the burden of disappointing

someone very much like herself. A patron enters

the building, crushing leaves underfoot. Her wet-haired

willingness shifts into the lamb’s body—she returns

to the field, on her back and rustic—the telephone rings.