AT THE TABLE ON THE LAST DAY

Photo from Unsplash.

At the end of the world I will hold a dinner party,
and the table will be covered in white blossoms,
those flowers whose plain appearances belies their strong scent:
jasmine, narcissus, gardenia. And the room will
be just hot enough that we might breathe their strong
smell for one more night. And the food will be colorless:
thin slivers of cod, translucent, folding gently under
the fork, julienned strips of bitter white parsnip, bowls of
water-rich jicama and mounds of gelatin with small,
sparkling trapped bubbles, spoons and spoons of salted
white rice, little cubes of sugar, so that we might with eyes
open experience the deception of sense that is 
heralded by absence. But I do not ask for no color at all,
no, we will all wear our Sunday clothes, for the end of the
world will be a month of Sundays, and we will all lie, sated,
wearing our best sequins on the worn out couches, tossing
our high heels on the buckled floors, and listening to the radio
crank out a last few plaintive strains, and then, finally, we will
stand at the window in our bare feet, lift up the screen and
feed on the stars, exclaiming “my God, brothers, they are good!”