Coffee and Oranges

by Suzanne O’Connell

I look west out my office door.

There’s a stubborn spiderweb on my screen.

There’s a green chair on the deck I never sit in.

The chair once had dreams of accommodation,

but they were never realized.

A single red rose is finally blooming on the vine.

Yesterday I planted Carol’s sweet pea seeds.

It’s cooler now, and the weatherpeople talk about rain.

There were so many seeds, brown and plump,

and because they were Carol’s,

I felt pressure to give them the best chance,

to plant them perfectly.

If they bloom, her memory will surround me.

I’ll cut some for the globe vase, too,

on my desk, like a science lab beaker.

It was also hers.

The smell of the blooms will take me back

to her upper yard, the tall cypress trees,

the old bathtub filled with water lilies

where Marcel fished for frogs,

the birds making a racket,

and the three of us plus Marcel

sitting in mismatched chairs

we found on walks and dragged home,

the three of us,

drinking coffee and eating oranges.

BIO: Suzanne O’Connell’s recently published work can be found in Bicoastal Review, Cantos, Chaffin Journal, Drunk Monkeys, Doubly Mad, El Portal Literary Journal, Midwest Quarterly, The Opiate, Perceptions Magazine, Pine Hills Review, pioneertown, Rue Scribe, Silver Birch Press, Sublunary Review, Tulsa Review, Visitant Lit, Word for/Word, Wrath-Bearing Tree, and others. She was awarded second place in the 2019 Poetry Super Highway poetry contest. O’Connell was also nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and received Honorable Mention in the Steve Kowit Poetry Prize, 2019. Her two poetry collections, A Prayer For Torn Stockings and What Luck, were published by Garden Oak Press.