The brown leather couch
She dropped onto the couch, a soft sigh escaping as though the old thing had been holding its breath in her absence. Her body folded into the lumpy, chocolate-brown leather, which embraced her with its softened edges and hidden grief. Every crease held a story. The deeper hollow belonged to the years when they sat shoulder to shoulder, laughing over nothing at all. A smaller indentation marked the quieter years, when silence settled between them and they occupied opposite ends of the same room, wondering how two people could become estranged while sharing the same address. Then came the months when death stood quietly at the door, and he slipped past it by the narrowest of margins. Somehow, after everything, the couch remained. Their cats, Georgie and Mikey, had scratched and clawed their way into claiming ownership of its lumpiness. A strip of tape held one seam together beneath an old velvet throw she straightened every morning, lest the room resemble a hippie den. Every evening, by ...