Three years of dedicated contact have produced this exact indent–
this geographic record of the evenings not so elegantly spent
in the posture of a man who genuinely intended to do a number of things
and instead developed a long-term relationship with broken springs.
The fabric’s got my longitude and latitude memorized–
the topography of a lifestyle I would never have advertised
at twenty-two, when the couch was furniture and the night had plans,
before I became the kind of man who cancels and understands
that canceling is its own particular form of staying warm.
The couch already knows my shape–every hollow and every edge pressed in.
It doesn’t hold me to the promises I made or ask me where I’ve been.
No tally of the empty cups, no audit of the burning hours–
the couch already knows my shape, accepts the weight, calls it ours.
No judgment in the give, no lecture in the compromised spring–
the couch already knows my shape. The couch knows everything.
I meant to call her back before she adjusted her expectations of me.
I meant to be the version who follows through on the first three
attempts at contact before the silence becomes its own answer–
instead I watched four episodes of something, a quiet cancer
of productive evenings going nowhere, the plot blessedly simple,
the stakes controlled, the drama nothing the remote can’t ripple
into nothing. Forty-seven minutes at a time, no residue.
The couch and I have an arrangement. Nothing else is due.
The cushion holds the record of my finest failed intentions–
every night I didn’t move, the full collected mentions
of a body that decided rest was better than the reach.
The couch already knows my shape. Still within reach.