furnished

A house is not a home until it is furnished. The bare skeleton of a home develops layers of muscle composed of scarlet red drapes and is fleshed out by vanilla-woven throw pillows, further embellished by the piles of mail sprawled across the dining room table. I appreciate furniture in its astute ability to observe and eventually become so normalized it wanders into the land of the unnoticed. If I lie still enough on the shaggy, cookie-colored carpet, I can feel my limbs slowly sink into the realm of the omniscient. My mother’s exhausted voice carries through the kitchen and bounces off the walls until its soft echo grazes my eardrums. My father’s calculated steps, heavy on his heels, are supplemented by the sound of his cracked soles grazing the hardwood floor like sandpaper. The sound of my older sister’s cries and stomps bleeds through the ceiling and drips down onto my forehead, reminding me of my helplessness. I sit and I absorb it all, collecting the emotional scrapes on my skin like the leather couch curled around my living room. The furniture never seems to forget. It has experienced the wrath and weather of my family for years. It holds memories between broken stitches and continues to serve its purpose day after day. Where there is life, it is followed by decay.

I always did love that leather couch. My mom reminds us that it is older than all of my sister’s ages combined on multiple occasions. It wraps around the perimeter of the living room, framing a perfect L, composed of rotting chocolate brown leather. Its exterior is adorned by an assortment of throw pillows ranging from jewel-tone purples to horrific houndstooth prints that assault the artistic eye. I never minded its general ugliness nor dusty aroma that tickled my nose hairs and would occasionally cause a sneeze. Each day, I would sink into its skin, intertwined with a wisdom I could never fully fathom. My sweaty surface would melt into its embrace, sticking to my skin until I could not differentiate where I stopped and it began. Its cracks were lined with goldfish crumbs and secret meals I would smuggle into the living room when my parents were both off at work for the day. I'd drag my nail through the indents between cushions to scoop up as much material as I could before my mom could scold me on my lack of cleanliness. My sisters and I joked that you could gather a full course meal from the sheer mass of food buried within that couch. The belly of the couch bleeds light brown scrapes from where my kitten had marked his territory over the years. Though his scratching post lay against the back of the couch, he made the executive decision to leave his mark where it could be better appreciated. The couch cradled away my cautions of being home. It was a safe space that not more than two people sat on at the same time. Couch time was a sacred section of the day dedicated to unwinding the intricacies of knots woven in my brain. It accepted my ugliness and quirks as much as I accepted its own, and together we pressed into each other's flesh like a hug meeting heart against heart.

Then there was the mandala rug that fell under the shadow of the chandelier attached to the highest part of the ceiling. It dressed the hardwood floor in a business-casual sort of manner with its discounted price elegance. My dad found it at the neighborhood garage sale and power-washed it on the driveway, leaking dirt and mold across the cement. It found its way into our home without an introduction or welcome. Its burgundy background and dizzying purple and yellow print stick out like a sore thumb in the center of the hardwood floor. As a child, I was entranced by the complexity of its circular matrix. I would walk its circumference until my eyes sunk back into my skull and began to spin under its hypnosis. It graciously caught me after I would disorientedly collapse into its grasp. There was a sense of trust between us that was a bred in our mutual oddity. My body would stretch like a starfish across its vast surface area, staring up at the dangling glass chandelier above us. I would often wonder if the carpet anticipated its impending collision with the sky. The chandelier's presence was overbearing, even when my neck wasn't askew, staring at its apex. It was always hanging above, lurking and reminding me of its attached consequence. Sometimes I wonder if the carpet would be there if the chandelier was not—whether its purpose was connected to preventing disaster, even though it seemed entertaining to the eye independently.

A round stone table seated my family for every meal and pastime. Its gray and pink granite top was composed of stones shaped like scales that swam around each other in concentric circles. Some iridescent stones would sparkle in the yellow light of the kitchen when I tilted my head at a certain angle. Its glass top, separating the stone from the surfaces of cups and plates, was carelessly shattered years ago when I dropped a glass bottle of perfume on its ridged side. Now its dry stone surface holds paint and stains from sauce that fossilized into its welcoming grooves and ridges. I knew each freckle on the face of the table as if it were my own. Dinner was when we made eye contact the most. When my lips were sealed from the expired spit of silence and my eyes widened to any sort of stimulation. I recognized patterns of decay centralized where main courses were designated. I imagined it knew my family by the patterns of our seating positions and table manners—how it could feel my father’s knuckles pound against its surface, my mother’s frail elbow supporting her corporate hand gestures, or my older sister’s incessant leg shaking anxiously disturbing the stillness of its plane. I doodled drawings and sentences on the belly of the table, materializing my thoughts with the warmth of my finger against the cold comfort of the cement exterior.n I felt safe knowing the dining room table experienced it all with me. In that observance and stability, it possessed yet never retaliated.

No one realizes how much shit my family has crammed into the closet. Behind its ivory ribs lie parallel shelves gushing with shoes, shin guards, hats, and wrappers. When the shelves were first installed, I was granted the privilege of labeling each level with the intended items it would house. Crafty assorted stickers were delicately plastered on the adjacent ledge beneath the shelf like a welcome mat for its designated items: a blue one labeled “hats,” a red one labeled “shoes,” and a mustard yellow one detailed “miscellaneous.” Stepping back from the organized shelves and their neatly aligned items filled me with great pride and a cathartic sense of control. Before long, my dad began shoving items into the miscellaneous category that he did not want to spend time organizing. Things like my younger sister’s snack wrappers and tennis balls he would dump after picking her up from practice. Eventually, each shelf evolved to become miscellaneous. No matter how many times I would intervene with monthly cleanings or polite comments to my parents and sisters to follow the system of organization, I was met with a nod, then unchanged behavior. Over the years, its chaos compounded. Shoes suddenly held sentimental value to my family, though they no longer used them. Expired twinkle toes that no longer lit up were preserved as nostalgic memorabilia. Gloves laced with poison ivy and thorns from weeding were noted to not be thrown away at all costs until my father got the chance to clean them. He never did. I could not pass the closet without feelings of rage bubbling in my stomach. It was a problem no complaining nor cleaning could solve. It was chronically abused by my family’s incessant need for hoarding. I hated the closet's ability to hold all of my family’s issues yet completely close its hinges, sealing away the need for intervention. It was silent and complacent, denying help with its angelic glow of pearlescent white paint and polished brassy knobs. It was okay holding the gravity of chaos, and for that, I could never empathize with the hollows of the cabinet.

On breaks when I visit home, I see the familiar surfaces of leather, paint, fabric, and stone that make up my home. Blankets of dust caress the same spots my body grazed daily, and I cannot help but feel guilty. Guilty of abandoning my home and the relationships I made with these spaces. How my body will never be little enough to stretch out in a star formation on my mandala carpet or sink into the same imprint on the couch that took years to craft. I envy how furniture never experiences the burden of growing pains, yet I pity the static prison of its placement, never realizing there is a home outside of this house.