Car Fire

I mean, even in death we will remain one (I will never be able to get rid of your roots in me)

I mean, I hang on your mind like dirty laundry drying out and this is a story about seeing (and being seen)

I mean, I keep coming back to your stoplight and seeing shadows (where else would I turn when the lights go dark)

I mean, the road dissolves you like a pill on its tongue (together we are nothing but a highway hallucination)

I mean, I’m no pyromaniac but we are flawed phoenixes rising from our own ashes (we burned the car and all of its histories)

I mean, after the coals have cooled I’ll still be standing on your doorstep asking, why have you not come back to haunt me (forgive me, we are tied together by the rope around my neck)

I mean, I won’t abandon you even in hell (I’m going there to meet you. It will be a mistake)

Charlie Stetson is an internationally-published poet studying Education at USC and an English, Film, and Gender Studies UCLA alum. She is a butch lesbian from Oakland, California teaching high school English in Los Angeles, and makes poetry for women everywhere to write about what makes them free. You can follow Charlie on Instagram here.