Hemlock

You will say “selfish,” and you will say
“crazy,” and you will turn from my last bed
to those left behind and say
“angry.”

You will say “asshole,”
you will say “waste,” you will say
“crazy” and “angry” again, you will say
“loss,” you will say “missing,” you will say
“there are no words,” you will say
words that say “nothing” in many ways —

but the one thing
you had damn well better not say
because you cannot say it and mean it
with a poker face after knowing me
all those years is
“why.”  You will likely be a liar
if you say “I don’t understand…”
and if you truly believe you do not understand,
if you are sincere in thinking that,
you really should say nothing at all.

Just put your arm across my cold chest then
and pretend to be close to me,
even though what you will feel
won’t be me at all anymore.  Perhaps
as you realize what it feels like to embrace
that no longer aching heart
in that no longer failing body,
the words will come to you
and they will be the words
you never thought to say.