Another ride, another cage,
the leather reeks of dread.
He pulled over once
and now it’s permanent in my head.
The rearview is a warning,
every glance holds a threat,
riding through the wreckage
of a thing I can’t forget.
Friends laugh and talk,
blind to the hurricane inside.
I smile and nod
but I’m buried in a ride I can’t abide.
Every turn, every stop sign,
a replay of that day,
when the whole world shrank to a spot
where I couldn’t get away.
No matter who’s driving,
I’m always transported back
to that moment, that place,
the snap of a closing trap.
Even laughter feels like chains
that drag me to that scene,
where I lost more than peace
in the backseat.
It always feels like walls
about to close in tight,
each passenger unknowing
as my panic grips and bites.
In this rolling prison,
I count off every mile,
searching for an exit
in each manufactured smile.
In the backseat,
shadows play across the corners of my eyes,
where the past and present bleed
and something in me dies.
I’m a ghost riding through my own life
in the place I dread the most,
trapped in the backseat,
sitting with my own familiar ghost.