These abandoned couches in Toronto will inspire dread

You're walking down the street feeling just fine. You have a comfortable job, a decent condo with stainless appliances, sex regularly enough that you can't complain, but then it happens: you encounter an abandoned couch on the street and this weird feeling builds in your stomach, crawls to your throat, and then hangs there, killing your appetite and optimism.

Existential dread. That's what you're in store for should you follow this relatively new Toronto Instagram account devoted to the street sofas of this city. These sites were popularized on Tumblr a while ago (my favourite is the Sofas of LA), but this one fosters a certain hometown horror that actually makes for some poignant images.

Always slightly askew, the lonely coach is a figure of displacement in general -- of lives in transition, and the sense of being left behind. Where the mattress is uniform, the couch is unique, and thus far more likely to be remembered. You wouldn't want to sit on one of these cast-offs, but the sense of meaninglessness gestured to by this forgotten furniture is intimate and uncomfortable all at once.

Check out more from @wetcouches on Instagram here.