Charles said, “Don’t ever eat blackberries. They have seeds”

His light blue polo matched the color of his eyes

“It can be scary when they get stuck in your teeth”

There was a sparkle when he looked at me

We stood in the kitchen

As he talked about work

He was stressed but always said, “I’m still kickin!”

He was finally a supervisor

But every day he couldn’t wait to retire

He spread some plain canned tuna on a tortilla

Said, “When you tell ‘em people have been poisoned, no one will believe ya”

“That’s why I only eat non-perishables, at least when at the job
I remember my predecessor, Rob – one day he just dropped

Turned into a Dateline episode some years later

The ME found some blackberry seeds in his stomach

Along with cyanide but no one had known who’d done it

And now I got this guy Keith trying to pawn off his blackberry jam

Yeah, we had a tiff about him slacking on his shift

But he doesn’t know who I am

I see the security films from overnight

Agnes in admin is right

Don’t leave your food unsupervised”

He looked at me, lifted his eyes

He held in his left hand a brown paper bag

In his right, extended to me, were some plump blackberries

They’d been in the communal fridge

I stood silently, didn’t mean to tarry

I myself was starving, I flinched

As we stood there alone in that corporate break room

My mouth watered

I reached out my hand to his. Fresh blackberries, what a gift

As my hand went to my mouth

There was a loud boom

“Don’t eat those!”

Shouted Agnes, barging through the door

Meanwhile Keith was in his office on the floor

Blackberries were found in his hands and mouth

Had Agnes figured it out?

In the footage and emails there were trails

Also in the city database: Rob and Agnes had the same face

She was his sister

Keith had worked with him and had become bitter

Rob had, like Charles, called out Keith’s slacking

That Dateline episode, for Agnes, was a whole unpacking

Someone else had been wrongly accused of Rob’s murder

Keith got away with it, continued to go further

I dropped the blackberries

Charles shared his tuna wrap

The cops showed up

And followed the office’s map

Agnes was cuffed after an investigation

As the cop car pulled away, she smiled

With blackberry seeds in her front teeth

It was final

She never made it to jail