The couch was a fabric the hue of buoyant sea waves and I sat there as prim as any sailing boat on a fine day. Upon those rolling cushions the birdsong became my lullaby. As each moment became the next sweet daydreams began from the joy of doing nothing, and then I was swimming with the rainbow fish of the deep, feeling the rhythm of a new body with fins.
The couch in the living room has seen many years, many seasons. Though beautifully designed the leather has been worn past the point of distress and now there are small tears and holes. The once bright tan colour has been bleached by the sun that streams in the window, the hue is now a friendly soft beige, the kind you could wrap yourself in by a campfire and be cosy for the night. I poke my finger into a hole and wiggle it, underneath is white foam that hasn't seen daylight in almost twenty years. I pull my finger out and turn to let myself fall on the seat with a satisfactory thump. This old chair is the one I spit up on as a baby, the one I drew on with markers as a toddler, the one I cuddled up on every time I was home sick with some bug. Now I'll have to be careful with the new one, no more eating on it, at least for a while. Yep, I'm gonna miss it.
Like everything else in the room the couch told a story, a testimony to the personality of its owner. It was a piece made more for style than comfort, a moderately priced copy of some truly talented designer. Underneath the blotches from casually dropped food it had been cream. She had aspired to a clean look, minimalist, pale, but lacked the self discipline not to each salsa and chips on it, glued to her B movies. Perhaps you think me unkind, judgmental, but I know it less than a year out of the showroom.