Baby Bitch, formally Garbage Man. Final Draft.

Baby Bitch – formally Garbage Man --- Draft 4
The man I miss- here, not 10 states or 2439.19 miles away
like usual, is fighting with me over directions: maps always fails us
when we're finally ten inches apart. When he gets mad, we both get
quiet and I stare at the swinging Jesus from the driver’s seat but forget
to pray. Clenched fists keep bad things in finger tips, like they have
since I was six. You can't yell at me, I tell him in a voice same
volume as the Ween song humming through half-busted speakers
in an all-busted Olds. The quiet is too loud to speak till he touches
my hand, or head, or whatever I let him touch, and sings along with words
in context: insulting, but from his mouth a hymn of forgiveness, please
don’t cry. Only his voice matters, crawls like steam under bathroom
doors, fogs up my car windows so I can't stay in this slow-burn
and when we finally get there, wherever that place was, he never says
sorry, only sings like broken Dylan to me in the voice that keeps me calling
over time zones, over weeks. It's hard to drive like that, he notes.
I am back in a kitchen I knew from being small, country blue curtains over a window
that never existed, once-white walls, stained and rented, and nod to the song
that slips from his lips, open palms around steering wheel, regrip and release,
when I remember it's not his fault. I can't blame this man
for clenched fists. He’s never even seen my kitchen.