What The Loveseat Knows

Seventy-five dollars. That’s what I cost when you brought me home from an older couple who hated to let me go. You had plans for me then—mornings of coffee, a place to pause, to breathe, to collect your thoughts in the life you were building.

But that life never gave you space to sit. There was yelling. Fighting. Expectations that never met reality. You passed me day after day, too heavy with everything else. I waited.

When you left him, you didn’t leave me. You carried me into your new apartment, and for the first time, you truly sank into me. I held you while you smoked, letting the weight of your loneliness settle into my cushions. Your tears soaked into my fabric; your words spilled into journals I’ll never read. I became your refuge—not a home, not a promise, but a place to survive.

And in that survival, you learned something new. How to be with yourself, after a lifetime of always being with someone else—a big family, a high school sweetheart turned husband. It was hard, but here, you found small moments of peace. Watching your son scribble chalk across the pavement, ride his little bike, fill the air with laughter. Tending to the plants you placed around me, each one reminding you that you could root and grow too.

I held all of it. The quiet joy. The nights of desire when you reclaimed your body under the stars. The heartbreak of giving your soul to someone who only wanted the surface. The endless overthinking, the silence, the ache.

And then, love returned—though not the love you once dreamed of. I remember the man who left flowers and coffee on me, even when your heart belonged elsewhere. He waited, patient, until your heart could see him. And when it did, you found what you’d been searching for all along: safety, steadiness, home.

Now he sits beside you, and for the first time in years, you aren’t surviving. You are simply living. He looks at me and asks, “Baby, do you want a new one? This one’s kind of worn.”

You pause, because you know what I’ve been—not the dream you imagined, but the witness to what really was. I am more than fabric and wood. I am memory stitched tight. Every tear, every laugh, every page of your becoming lives inside me. To keep me is to hold the weight of your past. To release me is to grieve it.

At first, you say no. Then you say yes. Ready to let someone else carry you forward. Ready to honor the past without needing to sit in it anymore.

And when I am gone, I hope you remember I was your sanctuary. Your altar. Your proof that you could hold yourself when no one else did.

Letting me go is not erasing me. It is trusting your future more than your memory. And that is how I know—I fulfilled my purpose.