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There’s a box out on your windowsill
Of flowers facing east
You pick a slip of your favourite
And give it to me to keep
And when we’re in the kitchen
We make something to eat
And as we wash up our plates and cups
In the sink, by the window still
Of all the flowers in the box, there is one
Lone sunflower, Facing you.
By Alicia Hennessy
I loved the pared back song-like quality to this poem, which places such close and attentive focus on the imagery of the flowers on the windowsill, and also the simple but essential actions of making food. This is a really intimate and generous poem which invites us into its world. The purity and clarity of the final image of the sunflower facing the speaker’s beloved is really striking and effective. My only small suggestion for this one might be to break the last lines slightly differently so that the second last line would read ‘there is one lone sunflower’ with ‘facing you’ on its own as a luminous final image. Really arresting work.