A Sofa

In suburbia, in a little backyard sits an old couch. A couch bed, but who would rather be called a sofa. A proper sofa, high backed, tan with a flower print. A stuffy thing that you might expect to find in your grandma’s house, covered in a plastic cover.

Once it was a king, the centerpiece of a living room set. Once it was the bed of dalmatians, chows, golden retrievers, labs and cats, the place where a man and a woman rested after a long day’s work, the trampoline of a small child.

The first night of it’s exile, after it was handled roughly and rammed out the backdoor, a little orange and white dog barked at it as a big, black unfamiliar shape in her territory. It was dark and cold, the ground wet and squishy from melting snow. It was scared and alone, abandoned and unloved.

As any sentient creature it knew there had been a time before it existed, and there would be a time when it was no longer there. It also knew that that time was quickly approaching, that soon enough its life would be ended, crushed in the cold steel jaws of a garbage truck.