I keep a pot of Chocolate Cosmos
tucked in the garden like a handwritten note.
Velvety red-brown petals unfold in the July sun
giving off deep cocoa, the smell of baking brownies,
and back I go to childhood and Wilmette.
Dad pulled up in a green Chevy station wagon
loaded to the roof with heavy burlap sacks
of cocoa shell—the leavings after the beans
were roasted, cracked and winnowed
at the factory. He hauled the bags out one by one
stacking them into a fort on the front lawn.
Walls eight thick bags high, open to the summer sky.
Neighbor kids came running. Nobody
had fences then. Skinny bodies climbed everywhere.
Pungent, chocolatey aromas released
from rough burlap as we scrambled to the top.
Days later, Dad pulled down the fort,
slit open the bags, and dragged brittle brown shell
across the yard, mulching nitrogen into hedges and grass.
All summer the outsize smell of chocolate.
