A Cage Left Open

The Blue and Yellow Plaid Couch

"The heaviest flowers you'll ever carry are the ones carried to a casket."

I felt a hand rest on my shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze before slipping away. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched a frail woman lay a white rose on top of the glossy, deep mahogany coffin.

"White roses were her favorite."

She turned to look at me, her eyes kind and apologetic.

We shared a smile. I couldn't quite place a name to her face, but it was gentle- she must have been an aunt or a grandmother's friend. I nodded my thanks for her condolences.

My eyes focused on a cross-section of two lines on the arm of the plaid couch just beyond her, where blue and yellow met and were obscured by a deep burgundy spot the size of a golf ball. Seven years ago, we spent our first night together in our studio apartment. We were on the bad side of town, with no heat or hot water in the dead of winter, but it was all that we could afford; most importantly, it was ours. The only things we had to our names were the apartment, a beat-up 1993 Pontiac Grand Am, the clothes on our backs, and that hideous blue and yellow plaid couch.

We bought it off of craigslist with the fifty dollars I had received for my last commission painting, and it was the only piece of furniture we owned. That first night together in our place, we ate frozen pizzas and drank cheap wine from the bottle while curled up under every blanket we could find in some futile attempt to stay warm. She was glowing that night. Maybe it was just the wine, or the giddiness of finally having something that belonged to us, or the fact that we were awake in each other's' arms at some indistinguishable hour of the night, but she was glowing. Her smile and the way her eyelids drooped with fatigue and drunkenness, and the way her hair sat sloppily atop her head in what she tried so hard to convince me was a bun- I'd never seen something as beautiful as she was in those moments.

The entire night, we exchanged I love yous and sloppy kisses over candlelight. We talked about our future, our past, God and everything we believed in, fears, love... We had been high school sweethearts, already been dating for four years, and I always thought I had gotten to know her better than I know myself in those years. I was wrong. Spending that night with her, curled up in our tiny apartment on the southside of Chicago, made me realize how little I knew and how much I craved to know- I knew that somehow, we belonged together that night, and for the rest of our lives.

"Will you marry me?" I blurted out.

She stared at me; her mouth hung open- I caught her mid-sentence in some story about her latest novel—she never looked as beautiful as she did when she discussed her writing, it was like her whole face illuminated with the life of her words. The wine bottle fell from her hands, leaving a deep burgundy stain the size of a golf ball where blue met yellow on the arm of the plaid couch. She nodded, nothing more than a squeak coming from her mouth. We laughed and held each other, talking about our future together.

I wish I had known the rest of our lives had an early expiration date.