My sofa

every day I come home on the tram. i get out at my stop and wait at the traffic lights for the tram to pass before crossing the road with the other people who got out. while the tram slowly passes, i look around me and see if there are any pretty girls. if there are, i make a rough estimate how many of them are living in the same dormitory as me and imagine one of them looking at me through the rain and shyly taking my hand as we cross the road. we walk to the dorm in silence and get in the elevator together up to the fourth floor. i open the door to my room and we go to sit on my balcony together. we watch the rain falling through the trees and cuddle up on my sofa.



I love the rain. I love my sofa and my balcony.


Six weeks ago I found the sofa on a street corner. It’s kind of sixties style, in good condition; fake velvet with bold floral patterns in brown and orange. I stopped a taxi and asked him if he would help me get it to my dorm. Since then I’ve more or less lived on my balcony. The best moments were when the gentle morning sun came through the leaves, or when it poured with rain, or when the storm shook the dark branches of the three big trees between my dorm and the one opposite in the middle of the night. I usually sit here alone, with my laptop to keep me company instead of a pretty girl.

Anatolian cello music is coming from the open door to my dimly lit room and it’s still raining. I contemplate what’s going to happen next. I’m about to leave this town; after a brief period of settlement. Most of the books I brought are still un-read in the shelf, four precious issues of Le Monde Diplomatique lie piled up neatly on the window sill, making my room look intellectual and international.

What will I do with my sofa when I move out in two weeks? Put it back on the street to an uncertain future? Take it with me to Berlin and during the month that I will be there find someone who might appreciate it as much as I did? Or put it up for auction on eBay? I’m not interested in the money, just in its future. I try not to cling to things, although they do play a role in a stage of our lives and gain a meaning. Often we assume that this meaning is attached to the thing itself, but isn’t that just an illusion with which we burden ourselves?