Pivot. No, the Other Way. No,

April twelfth.

The couch was not that big. That is the thing I keep coming back to. By any reasonable standard, it was a normal-sized couch. A loveseat, technically. And yet somehow it became the couch, singular, the couch that beat us, the couch that has now officially taken up more of my Easter weekend than any piece of furniture has a right to. Simone and I volunteered, voluntarily, of our own free will, no coercion, to help a neighbor move it from the second floor of her old place to the third floor of her new one, two buildings over. We were told it would take twenty minutes. I want to be very clear that it did not take twenty minutes.

The stairwell was fine on the way up the first flight. Fine-ish. The landing between the second and third floor was where things got philosophical. There is a bend in that stairwell that I'm fairly certain violates at least one law of geometry, and the couch had a very specific opinion about it. Simone was one step above me, I was pressed against the wall at a forty-five-degree angle I did not know my body could make, and the neighbor, bless her, genuinely, was standing at the top laughing and taking pictures instead of helping, which, honestly, I understand completely. We were hilarious. We were a cautionary tale about saying yes to things.

The couch has opinions about this corner.

We did get it up eventually. It took three attempts, a full rotation of the cushion situation, and one moment on the landing where both of us just set it down and stood there breathing like we'd run a 10K. Simone looked at me. I looked at Simone. She said, 'I thought you said you were athletic.' I said, 'I am athletic. This is not an athletic problem. This is a physics problem.' She didn't disagree, which I'm choosing to count as a point for me.

Rest stop. Floor two point five.

The neighbor made us tea afterward and showed us where the couch was going to live, and it looked perfect in the corner by the window with the afternoon light coming in. Worth it, probably. I told Simone that on the walk home and she said 'ask me again when I can lift my arms.' The photograph Carol sent is still on my kitchen counter, propped against the backsplash. I keep walking past it and not quite stopping. Today was not the day for that. Today was for the couch.