Cush

Growing up, we had a couch. I do not remember this couch. I was little when we had it (as seen here):


I do remember the replacement couch, however. It was goldish orangey and flowered and velvet and COMFORTABLE. The best sick couch. But this is not about that. This is about the first couch. While I don't remember the couch, I remember the cushions. Somehow, I adopted them. They were avocado green and a horrible brillo pad material. But stacked and maneuvered in my room, they made the perfect reading nook.

I spent many afternoons there, curled with a book. It was the perfect size to squeeze between my nightstand and chest of drawers, on my side of the bed. I could (and did!) get lost there for hours, until my mom called me to "stop reading already and join the family". It was there, on those cushions, that I scribbled furiously in my journals about this boy or that. Detailing how my life would be, how scared I was that I couldn't imagine past age 30. It was on those cushions I plotted my escape from my home town, daydreamed about college and adulthood and my fabulous life as a writer and later, playing the tapes my sister would send me full of songs I'd never heard but would become part of the fabric of me.

I don't know when I got rid of them. I'm slightly sorry I did. I'm currently looking at window seat options for a couple of rooms and I think that's why my memory of them flared. I'm not certain I would still love them, but I think I would, in all their brillo pad retro glory. But more than the cushions, I want that feeling back; my throne of possibilities. I need a space where my soul is quiet and options unfold. A place to scribble furiously and read for hours. To let music take over my soul and to be free, endlessly looking toward the future. When did I become the person who can't find that space?


(finn brothers, edible flowers)