That petal pink three-seater from the Baptist
thrift shop on Broad Street? Its ribbed texture
had the channeled dust, striped the upholstery’s
piping grey. You took eight months to tell me
your used couch came with a warning tag: that the sofa
had sat for decades in the waiting room of a Richmond
meningitis clinic. Although I haven’t thought of that gnarly
pink couch in ages, or your apartment on Lombardy
where we started our seven years, I’ve been thinking
about contagion lately, here on the edge of April
in this viral spring. From my balcony I watch a blue
flap of lacecap hydrangea flatten
on the sidewalk. No, it’s someone’s dropped
nitrile glove. We snuggled all spring on that grizzled
pink couch before we ditched it
in the side alley. We didn’t want to bring it with us
in the move. But before we trashed the sofa,
your friend the blues singer crashed
in the living room with a brunet psyche major
he’d met that night at his gig. As you and I lay in bed,
we heard a weird groan, and you flung open our door
on a blow job—the woman’s face bobbing just above
Andrew’s crotch and the couch’s center butt cushion.
You slammed the door, whispered, Oh, God! Oh, God!
until I sat up to shush you: Dude, it’s just a blow job. You flipped
the white sheet over your head, like a nun, finally
muttered your confession: You knew viral meningitis
died quickly on surfaces, that the sofa wouldn’t infect us,
but the idea of sex on those once teeming cushions
freaked you out. You stopped explaining as I collapsed
backward on the bed, as I rolled
from side to side, laughing. Right now, I could use
a laugh like that. That’s why I keep thinking
of that old sofa during this spring of the body
count, how we sprawled all season on a used
couch that could’ve killed us had it sat for less
time in the Baptist thrift shop. Even though
we no longer know each other, I like to remember
how we crept into the side alley, at midnight,
beers in hand, to stand in front of the pink
sofa we’d dragged between garbage cans
and fringed wisteria. I like to remember
that last glance you shot me before
we stepped up, each hurled a lit match.