I was sitting on the couch at my best friend\u2019s. I was staying the night, sleeping on his couch. Mike didn\u2019t like the term best friend<\/em> because he used to have a counsellor who had been through a messy divorce and the counsellor said it was too childish, to call someone your best friend, so I always called Mike my closest friend<\/em>, but really\u2026 best friend. He was the person I relied on. It was late afternoon on a Sunday and we talked again about the messy breakup Mike was going through from a very short relationship, and we talked about random stuff, and at some point I cried because depression is like that. When I stopped crying, Mike made some comment about how me crying on his couch wasn\u2019t what he\u2019d been expecting for his day and I semi-laughed and said Well, better than having the devil on your couch<\/em> and then we both looked at each other with wide eyes for a long time\u2014like, what would it be like if the devil was on your couch? What would the devil get up to?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The next day on my two-hour drive home I kept thinking about that, the devil on your couch, and then in my head the devil was on my couch crying. The whole idea of a heartbroken devil looking for comfort, needing some time to heal, took over my head. I mean, why should the devil be immune to heartbreak? How would the devil cope with heartbreak? Would it be something ethereal, something that lasts for a mere moment, or something more mortal?<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I got home, as soon as I walked in the door I sat down and wrote the entire poem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Looking back now, I see that I wrote a poem where the devil gets to experience heartbreak in a way that I\u2019ve never gotten to. I guess it\u2019s a slightly over-the-top imagining of dealing with heartbreak in a way I would\u2019ve liked to\u2014comfort food, a bath, crying. And someone there to quietly offer support. My heartbreaks have been met by the people around me shrugging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the ending\u2014has the devil made a good or bad decision? Who knows. Do we ever know if something was a good or a bad decision until enough time has passed? And how do we know if enough time is actually enough?<\/p>\n\n\n\n A few weeks after I wrote the poem, Mike and I had a massive fight. I messaged him about something and he took it completely the wrong way, and then every time I replied I think you\u2019ve misinterpreted what I said,<\/em> he\u2019d get angrier and I\u2019d get more depressed and then I ended up suicidal and then he got angry at me for being suicidal and so I got more suicidal and he got angrier at me for that. It was devastating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I now have a lot of regrets about ever being friends with Mike, but damn, I got a lot of great poems from all those Sundays we spent sitting on his couch, talking about random stuff. I hope the devil is sitting on his couch. I hope someone in that room is crying.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Paula Harris lives in Aotearoa\/New Zealand, where she writes and sleeps in a lot, because that’s what depression makes you do. She won the 2018 Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize and the 2017 Lilian Ida Smith Award. Her writing has been published in various journals, including The Sun<\/em>, Hobart<\/em>, Passages North<\/em>, New Ohio Review<\/em> and Aotearotica<\/em>. She is extremely fond of dark chocolate, shoes and hoarding fabric. website: www.paulaharris.co.nz | Twitter: @paulaoffkilter | Instagram: @paulaharris_poet | Facebook: @paulaharrispoet<\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n You can order a physical copy of 46.1 on our website<\/a>, or purchase a 2-year subscription. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Paula Harris, whose poem “the devil is sitting in my living room crying” appears in SRPR Issue 46.1, talks heartbreak and the devil sitting on your couch. I was sitting on the couch at my best friend\u2019s. I was staying … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Paula-Harris_c2020_Tabitha-Arthur-Photography-2-4-200x300.jpg\")
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