It’s Me, Your Coffee Table

Hey uh, Viv? It’s me, your coffee table. I know that you’re accustomed to me as more of a showpiece than a vocal participant in this relationship, but can we talk? 

I think we’ve had a good run. We’ve lived in seven different apartments together in nine years. Not many coffee tables can say that. Most go straight from their boxes at IKEA to a curb to a garbage truck to an I-don’t-even-want-to-think-about-where in a year or less. We’re good together. Thanks for continuing to lug me around, even though my paint is kind of chipped and it seems like I’m getting fewer and fewer compliments every year. That’s just getting older, I guess. It’s true what they say, that you start to feel invisible. In coffee table years, I’m almost 800. 

I feel a little weird saying this, but things don’t seem to be getting better so here goes nothing: can you stop with the fucking books? 

It was okay when it was one or two paperbacks that you would pick up every day or two, but then it was the stack of 75 New Yorkers which only ever grew in one direction and now it’s just an endless pile of motherfucking hardcover books? 

Give me a break! I’m a coffee table! I’m happiest when I’m holding an espresso and a bullet journal—tops! Fine, throw in a photogenic pen, fine! I don’t even mind if you Mabel, Mabel, elbows on the table while you journal!

The bookshelf and I have talked. She’s also getting rather fatigued with you, but recognizes that this slack belongs firmly on her shelves. My legs are not what they used to be! 

Let me give you an example of the kind of behavior I’ve seen from you these past few months. You drop a book on me. Fine. It’s heavy but I can deal. You pick up that book for 20 minutes, put it down, pick up your phone, put down your phone, pick up the book, put down the book, pick up the phone. Phone, book, phone, book—make up your mind?? And then, next day: new book on top of the old book and it starts all over. Phone, book, phone, book. Except that instead of putting one book back on bookshelf, both books stay sitting on top of me! Cycle repeats every day for two weeks. Fourteen books, Viv. Fourteen books are now crushing me and you’ve started using them as a foot rest while you scroll through your phone. I have no surface area left for your coffee so you brought over a stool to rest your mug on.