I haven’t eaten a hundred plates of crow
so I can sit here alone wondering if you’ll call

or if, when you do, I’ll answer, or if,
when I answer, we’ll be able to make it

through five minutes without recrimination.
The crow tasted as you’d expect. The worst

was gristle stuck to bone. That, and the beak.
Crows have a multi-purpose beak: they can crack,

shred, chisel, probe, strain, spear, tweeze.
In this way, the beak was like a re-enactment 

of the years with you: going in for the kill.
I might seem to mock you, relying on the literal, 

but I said I would eat crow, and I’ve eaten crow 
by the white plateful. You, however, will never 

call, and the moment regret begins, I’ll remember 
the hundred plates, the unnervingly large

crows, and make them disappear as they did
on that silk painting we both loved, the one we saw 

arm in arm the first week we were together, when flight 
meant only what we would do again, and soon, 

my body against your body lifting from the bed
as if we were winged, beyond impediment.