you “wished you were dead” now look
here we are: your last meal
a Chocolate McFlurry & i helped you eat it
we both knew i’d never eat a McFlurry
if it killed me, but duly i ate it & duly it killed me, albeit
weeks later to witness the last supermarket gift
certificate you’d bestowed upon me finally voided
& thus scissored before me
in curt & unthingable shards truly painful
by a pimply & curious if-
well-meaning checker at the checkout
line at the HyVee 33 minutes’ brisk walk
from my house, whereto i routinely lug & this time also
lugged several white-red plastic bags brittle, fraught, brimmed & grinning
with brassicas, liver, alliums, sardines, chard,
and so on, there’s nothing
like what you know lugged all the way home & promptly abandoned
upon the more-urgent floor: collapse of bag upon boards
made good lord what a gruesome
living-and-not-living noise: styrofoam undertaken
with oil, discharged green soaked dead
against plastic, meat bloodied drooling & splat spilling
over, & fluids, & milks, & tissues, & solids: thus emitted the clamor
of my stuff against stuff, hallowed aloud
& resounding alongside the room: what a ruinous mess, though weirdly enough
was i ever glad
in my disgust to hear that horror
-struck noise, that spectacle / sound
reminder somehow a survival
of you: this audible proof
of your last felt kindness, albeit confused
among others