Old Sofa

By Rina Palumbo

I'm sitting on the sofa, the television, angled to my left about ten feet away, is muted but still broadcasting news stories and commentaries and a variety of pharmaceutical commercials that list disclaimers and possible side effects to mark the end of one and the beginning of another. My dog Lippo, a stray rescue mixed breed ten pound bundle of muscle and short black fur is in the opposite corner, sleeping his way through the early afternoon. On my lap, in my place in the triad, is my Moleskine notebook, the second in a three-pack I bought at Costco with its red cover bent back to provide stability to the college ruled pages. My attention jumps from the electronic screen to the rhythm of my dog's breathing, to the marks I am making on the page with a pen I took from the desk drawer of a hotel room, to the pressure I am beginning to feel behind my left eye because I'm not wearing my prescription glasses.  

My sitting body is sensate, not just the eye strain, and the impending headache, but the occasional numbing  I'm starting to get in the upper third of two fingers of my right hand which comes and goes in an instant, unlike the headache which will build and then be tolerated and finally go away. It's all about neurons, nucleus to ganglia, central to peripheral systems, electrical impulses dependant on fluid levels. Such infinitesimal things. I imagine the pixilated bursts of light from the television scattered through the air and recombining into images in my retinas, the work of gravity pushing the blue ink down and out and forcing its molecules to combine with those of the porous page, and the cracking I'm starting to see on the pads of Lippo's feet. Such quick things. I think about the glimpses between the squares, the spaces between words, between the lines of frequency modulations and amplitudes, the slow sleeping breaths, the soft skin under the cracks. Such small, quick, and lovely things.

This old sofa sits in the first house I have ever owned. The sofa travelled with me to other houses and apartments, and faced a variety of television sets and screens before it landed in front of this one. There is a relationship between these two objects, between sofa and television, a vinculum modulated by the available square footage of the given room. 

Lippo is the first dog I have ever owned, a new experience but one that feels familiar. His breathing is the only noise now, and brings me forward into stillness against the broadcasting images of people, places and things. A single verb battling a triumvirate of nouns. 

Writing has always been. As a child, often left alone with some money to go to the corner store to get something to eat, I would buy Hostess pastries which had a piece of cardboard holding up the Cupcakes,  Ding Dongs, Zingers, Ho Hos, and Sno Balls. I remember writing on that bright white rectangle, usually in blue ink, and telling stories of Barabera, my heroine, off traveling to find adventure and treasure. The shape of these stories were always dependant on that left behind by the pastry, circles and ovals,  and their color, soft gold, dark brown or bright pink. I would write her stories while sitting on the sofa in front of the television, and she always found her way back to where she began.

My dog breathes softly, the muted television is on, and I'm sitting on the sofa writing in my notebook.

Rina Palumbo (she/her/hers) has a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins and is working on a novel and two nonfiction long-form writing projects alongside short-form fiction, creative nonfiction, and prose poetry. Her work is forthcoming or appears in Milk Candy, Bending Genres,  Stonecoast, and AutoFocus et al.