Hers was a new kind of loneliness,
a perverse presence of mind, as in
a Magritte, the outside, in, the inside,
out, humid nights she smoked
long black cigarettes, coughing blood
she spits into Mason jars kept in
closets and beneath the sink, shelves
of them, kept for no clear purpose
other than as a reminder she’d been
here, been with this man and it had been
like this.
