keep my skull (on your mantelpiece)

grinning man

I can't commit for fear of being left
on the side of the freeway in my too-big shoes
hitchhiking my way home

and when the cops show up and when they all know my name
I'll be the last words whispered before Sunday morning

how yielding, this dirt ditch of a mattress
these leaf-topped elegies like a
stone mountain headpiece

he's singing hymns to the old river Styx
I told you right where I'd be and where I'll remain
hounding the locals like a ghost story
they'll all forget that I was just a girl

because fogginess exists at the rest stop between here and his flatbed
I'll be damned if he gets a new car out of this
new leather seats
claw-marked cheeks; my parting gift

thanks to the kindness of strangers and their kind kind smiles and their kind kind hands

how could I have ever known which grinning men are the right men to trust?