sketchbook stories: the red couch

every picture tells a story

Every piece of furniture in my mother’s house is uncomfortable. Especially the red couch, the one where the family dog once slept; the one my mother called the “hired man’s bed” before the dust bunnies beneath it became as terrifying as the ghosts that inhabited her mind. The red couch, displayed like a museum piece with all the other antiques.

Jack napping on the couch; mom’s sketchbook c.1973

And when I return to my mother’s house, her spirit hovering between echoes, the red couch is still there, narrow and scratchy and hard—as painful as the eras it represents—whispering the secrets of those who came before.