Last Lunch

eating hemlock --for Slam

We meet
at Rufino’s
to watch the view
of a dark river folding
and to feel the wind
of assumptions,
inferences,
and decline.

I think,
at least,
we may speak
in the old language,
your voice
a sled
on skeletal hopes
during my descent
from you.

Yet,
acting preemptively,
your words hit my extremities,
creeping inwards
through a tourniquet
of floating numbness.

Between truth and falsehood,
an appetizer's
metallic taste,
for the main course,
eating hemlock
with touch-me-not,
silencing history.

No thrashing,
no pain;
finally,
I have nothing to lose.