Writing Prompt: Write About A Bed

You want to say that it was large. A beautiful boat of a bed, styled after Marie Antoinette, all swirls and iron flourishes. But it wasn't. It was a divan. The worst kind of divan, all spiky springs and quilted satin headboard.

It was small. Unusually small. Perhaps one of those one and a half beds, for women who replaced the man long gone with the hot little body of the daughter he left behind, or a pillow turned length-ways to stop the goose pimples of his absence fluttering once again over her flesh. It was small and perfumed by something ugly. Something you couldn't bring yourself to think about.

You weren't unhappy. But you were cold. Your body scrunched into a ball, hands tucked into the warmth between your legs. The sheets a mere nylon nod to comfort. The boucle mustard bedspread spread across the lino floor like a picnic blanket laid down for a feast.

There were three pillows. His pressed over his face when he slept and yours clutched between your breasts, the other flat beneath your head as you lay there breathing ice into the air and reading the words scrawled all over the toile paper on the walls. Your red lipsticked vitriol an insult to what once must have brought decoration to a room otherwise devoid of anything resembling style.

He laughed in his sleep. A muffled grin spoken out loud.