Commorientes

The excellent fish sauce you had poisoned; 
then you’d have had me out on the bonfire.

Thwarted love drove you you claimed.
I did not misgive but I prefer that

country music, hearts taking their time.
You were medicine, brightened me

yet I declined your fish supper, left
empty. After, you never answered

my texts, and the posse of Numidians
you bribed to jump me were violently

confused - too much fragrant weed.
Everyone on the Sulis Minerva estate

is smoking these days, or dealing.
You abandoned your cognomen

the name of the dead man, the god
and settled on another more ordinary

still stalk me, sometimes arrange
us to pass in the street. Come

November the locals have a new guy
to burn, and the kid on the tricycle

who tailed me yelling insults has
disappeared. I get my fix somewhere else.

You continue to maintain it was my fault
as though I had chosen to poison myself.

@ianjmclachlan