I drove past my old apartment the other day, as one does when you’re bored on a Friday night while living with your parents for an uncertain amount of time during a global pandemic.
It was just five months ago that I’d left this cozy Long Beach apartment tucked away on a wide street lined with jacaranda trees, and moved across the country to Brooklyn where I could count everyone I knew one hand. I’d packed only what was precious to me, which laddered up to one suitcase and one box full of my belongings. The rest, I donated to the local Savers.
However, as I made my wistful drive past my old stomping grounds, I remembered one precious item I hadn’t been able to stow away in my luggage. The blue couch.
The blue couch was the first item of furniture that my roommate, Noemi and I bought when we moved into the apartment. We found it on OfferUp, the Depop of secondhand furniture apps. The girl who was selling it lived in Manhattan Beach–an upper-scale part of the South Bay, so I knew it was good stuff. We convinced her to hack the price down from $100 to $80. While it was a small decrease in retrospect, something about getting that extra zero knocked off made it feel like a sweet deal at the time.
The couch was better looking than it was functional. It’s blueish-green color paired well with our dark brown carpet and light wood coffee table. But if you sat in the middle of the couch the two cushions would fly up on either side of you like a pair of wings – a fitting image, considering the blue couch is where I’d often sit for hours, taking out my box braids, each time feeling born again.
It was on that couch that I started writing a play about a girl who has conversations with her Higher Self. I went so far as to set up a call with the theater professor at my old college to ask for advice on playwriting. I never finished the play, but the blue couch reminds me of the value there is in a willingness to try.
When I think about my old apartment, I think about the blue couch. I think about how I finally finished New Girl on that couch. I think about all the times I scarfed down McDonalds on that couch, and then felt bad about eating McDonalds on the couch. I think about the time I almost kissed someone on that couch, but didn’t, either because of fear or because of some kind of sixth sense.
I think about what might be stuck in the blue couch’s crevices: Slurpee straw wrappers, over-stretched rubber bands, ballpoint pen caps. But also the intangibles like the hour between the text and the text back, the tweet I typed out, and then immediately deleted, the last-minute decision to smile with teeth before the flash.
The blue couch is the apartment to me. It is the 9 months that I lived there. It is everything I remember. It is everything I may have already forgotten.
Here’s this week’s prompt:
In <500 words, write about an object that has lots of memories attached to it. That’s it, that’s the prompt.
Submit your responses here. Submissions are due by Saturday at 11:59pm PST.
Last week’s prompt was: Write a short scene in which two people have a conversation. It doesn’t matter who the people are, where they are, or what they’re talking about. The only rule is that the conversation must start with one of the characters saying: “What are you doing?”
This submission is from a reader named Kyleigh:
“What are you doing?” I ask as he edges towards the pool.
February is particularly hot this year. We are laying in our swimsuits on the balcony, drinking hard cider at noon, shifting our positions regularly to ensure we are always in the shade of palm trees. “Tanning.” We reek of sunscreen, panic when we’ve misplaced our sunglasses for more than a moment. I take a mental note of the theatrics of it.
“I want to feel the water,” he says. “It’s probably warm enough,” though he shivers at the suggestion of coldness that a single toe being dipped brings. He lingers at the edge, perhaps wishing that he can warm the water with sheer willpower.
I wonder if everyone else feels this glamorous, spending a California winter this way. I wonder how I became lucky enough to know you.
On some level, I know perhaps we are making more of summer than actually exists - that it is actually only 80 degrees but it feels warmer in direct light, that he and I are in the habit of turning our heads to avoid looking at trouble spots, that sometimes we only see what we want to.
I admire his tenacity. Swimming in February pushes the boundaries of being realistic, but I join him with my heels on the edge and my toes threatening to dip into the water. I don’t know any other way.
You can find Kyleigh’s Instagram here.
I’m gonna be honest, guys. Writing the newsletter these past two weeks has been hard. In the spirit of sharing some wisdom from some of my favorite writers (and friends) I took to the good old iMessage and asked for their advice on what to do when writing gets hard. Here’s what they said:
Alex’s advice:
Sydney’s Advice:
Brea’s advice:
Thanks Alex, Sydney and Brea for the advice (and for the friendship 💖).
Until next week!
Best,
Celeste