The Widening

In I suppose a pinprick of hope, I look out his windshield
wanting it to be true: northern lights or meteor showers
or something above the valley so his hand
on my thigh has a better explanation, anything but 
the trope of furniture-maker/rig driver driving his babysitter home 
and stopping the car in the ditch. At two in the morning,
the black map of pinpoints above can be joined to form bears 
and ladles of milk, archers with arrows pointing to North, to Hercules. 
But his hand is on my thigh, same hand that leaves porn magazines
for me between the couch cushions, leaves cereal and sour milk, leaves
the nails of his children dirty and grasping for their one shared
tooth brush. I squint into the distance above the hills. If I want someone
to be grateful for me, I don’t know it yet. If I want
a man’s hand on my jeans, I don’t know it yet. He decides
to point to a series of dots above us. And among the voices in my head
I hear him saying, See? This is a kind of map. And I don’t hate him
for showing me that because yes, I see it too, it’s a mess.

Pictured: Bird Bike (or: the poet at nineteen). From family archives.