Vestiges by Laura Stringfellow

We are driving home. Dark
stretches across the sky.
Rain thumps the windshield.
From the back seat, my gaze
is steady on the glass,
moving lines of rain
held between the profiles
of my parents―my mother's
black hair against the seat,
the rigid musculature of my father.
 
Square lighted windows
of houses glare like eyes.
 
Under sagging clouds of rain,
in the closed car, the splattered road
under our feet, I am trapped.
Worse, I have thought myself so.
I was foolish enough to believe
I could take off the past
as though it were a garment,
a sick cloak to be destroyed
thread by thread, sliced
down the middle,
then, finally,
abandoned to the smoldering fields of fire.

About the Poet:

Laura Stringfellow writes both verse and prose poetry, holds an MFA in Creative Writing, Poetry, and hails from the muggy strangelands of the Southern US. Her work has appeared in various literary journals and magazines, including Right Hand Pointing, Clementine Unbound, Déraciné, Neologism Poetry Journal, Coffin Bell: a journal of dark literature, Ephemeral Elegies, and The Lake. Read more of her work at laurastringfellow.com.