Castaway

by Lori Bonati

It’s the year of the virus. I’m single
and stuck here like a castaway
on a two-bedroom island.
I’ve been talking to the furniture.

Dinner conversation with Mabel and Cher
(my table and chair) can be wooden,
so to liven things up I bring out the wine,
Frenchmen with charming accents.

I speak to them softly or brightly;
they stare glassily, so proud of their
sleek green bodies and little cork berets,
each one of which I’ve named Corky.

Then there’s Sophocles, my sofa,
a great comfort to me at night
as we watch the death toll news.
He seems unmoved, no stranger to tragedy.

While I fret and wring my hands,
he supports me with strong arms,
anchoring me to the firmament,
although I did spill wine on him last night.

Luckily, Rhoda, my bubbly club soda,
was right there in the fridge.
I wiped the damned spot clean,
feeling grateful to have such good friends.

Lori Bonati is a retired school psychologist with a passion for writing. She is originally from upstate New York but has lived in Tucson, Arizona, for the past 17 years. She is currently working on a middle-grade novel, children’s picture books, and poetry. She also dabbles in songwriting and photography. Her previously published writing includes The Snake Path (winner of the Paradigm Prize, 2018); Song Seeds (Moon Shadow Sanctuary Press, 2019); selected poems, Desert Tracks: Poems from the Sonoran Desert (Lelepono Press, 2019); selected poems, Purifying Wind (Moon Shadow Sanctuary Press, 2020). Stella Bellow is an illustrator currently attending Parsons School of Design in New York City.