Our first-time dinner guest crossed the threshold into our living room and surveyed his surroundings.  Taking in the duo of cranberry swivel arm chairs and matching throw pillows accenting a milky white overstuffed couch, he complimented, “Ooh, I like the red!”

Little did he know that those five well-intentioned words could set free a spool of memories, a long thread of history woven into the fabric of those chairs and cushions.

He couldn’t possibly know of their original owner, gone two years this month.  He never watched her laughter cause the chairs to rock back and forth.  He had never sank into the comfort of her easy hospitality.   He never saw how she longed to stand up from that vanilla couch to greet and embrace, nor how she remained leaning against those crimson pillows, in too much pain to rise up.

He saw the red, and he liked it.

I see the red, and so much more.

This post is part of Lisa-Jo Baker‘s Five-Minute Friday, where we gather together to write for five minutes, unedited, on a given prompt for the week.  This week’s prompt was red.