A Memoir Piece instead of a Poem

I never liked that swamp-green couch. Maybe it is because that’s where I sat when I heard that dad died. He had reached the end of his line, while I had only just begun mine.
In my innocence I could not comprehend death. I did not understand why my brother was crying, or why my mum looked as if her heart had been torn to pieces. I believed I would come down the stairs one day and see him there on his favourite chair, reading the newspaper.
He never sat on that couch. I don’t think he liked it either. But now I have more memories with that couch than I have of him.
It’s where I sat with my brother during a thunderstorm, a few years later. The clouds had turned an evil green, and I only dared to look for a brief moment before I closed the curtains again. I remember crying into the couch while praying for the thunderstorm to pass.
There was constant anxiety in me. Ever since my dad passed, I was stuck. Stuck thinking that I could die any moment, or that my mum also wouldn’t come home one day. If she did not get back home at the exact time she said she’d be back, I became the embodiment of panic.
I paced back and forth through the living room while constantly checking the front and back of the house, sometimes sitting down for a second on that old couch, but I could not find my rest. I went to the neighbours, crying and begging if they could find out if she would be coming home.
Sometimes I would just sit on the couch with my gaze fixed on the front door while my mum was away from home. Those years of my life were a living hell. The anxiety would strike at random times and when it did, all I could do was sit and try to breathe. As I matured, it gradually became less severe.
We threw out that old couch when we moved house a few years after my dad’s death. We went to the dump, and I still remember the couch’s dying sounds as it was fed to the crushing machine. The first push of the metal on the wood broke its back as it seemed to break in two.
I looked away after watching the macabre display for a moment. The couch did not want to give up yet, as it managed to cling on for a minute. When I looked again, there was just a mix of green fabric and wood. It was the end of another chapter.
I still sometimes miss that couch.