—­Kathleen Volk Miller

The inverse is true. Not tonight
or tomorrow, it’s one

of the seven or eight kinds
of self-abuse: the body a standoff—

midnight and beer is when I think of her,
as almonds and Asiago,

clementines and wine spread out
on the floor of her apartment,

no chairs, just pillows
and talk of the men

we loved who gave us grief.
More wine and we’d find

the ninth or tenth kind of abuse
with talk until sunrise,

until the men we loved were gone
or briefly solved,

all absence and what we could do without
naming, but now she is gone,

unmetaphorically dead,
let me say it again,

dead, beyond any thought
she could have of me

as Corona and cigarettes,
Monterey Jack and the men I still love

but can no longer tell her about,
it’s brutal, this wanting to call

and tell, the eleventh kind of abuse,
no dinner tonight, and yes,

I still smoke, the twelfth,
the one promise I made to her,

but too thinly sealed now,
the way the skin of the clementine

pulls away from a fruit
that’s too ripe—

no, not tonight,
not tomorrow,

there are promises
I can’t keep.