Lauren Sheerman

SOMETIMES I SIT IN MY CAR

wearing my favourite shirt like I’m real
I pretend to be bored in traffic & ok I’ll sing along
& roll my eyes & pretend to be rushing & yes
I’ll stand in a queue at the supermarket with my arms crossed
a basket of bougie food at my feet & I’ll hold my keys like I own something.
& sometimes I get home from a short trip 
to buy something I’ve forgotten but I linger outside
in my car like I have a whole family waiting for me inside
like I have so much responsibility for a happiness I don’t even know
for a life I don’t even want. & how could I it’s like craving those plastic
high heels from the 90s & there’s that smell to everything
like sweetly perfumed plastic on the bald barbie body & everything
I’d slung out of the window — a life I couldn’t see & I didn’t want it
but then my niece who is 3 reads her 2 friends who are snails a bedtime story
& they listen on a leaf in the garden to this girl who is excited for tomorrow to see her snails
as though they will be waiting & that night I linger outside longer this time
but I go in eventually & I eat peanut butter standing up at the kitchen counter
& I think can I live a life like this yes can I live like this
& I refresh my emails I open the messages on my phone 
& I open my diary at today like oh I have so much to do but really
today I have so much!

Lauren Sheerman is doing a creative-critical (poetry) PhD at the University of East Anglia. Her poems have been published in Berlin Lit Journal, Fourteen Magazine, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Pearl Moss Press and in the anthology ‘Brilliant Vibrating Interface’, edited by Spam Zine. More information about her work can be found on her website: www.laurensheerman.co.uk

Lauren wrote the following about her poem:

I think a lot of people, and particularly those working in the creative industries, feel like having any kind of security is a distant dream. The uncomfortably close house shares, the lack of jobs and grants available, the general unaffordability of life make many desires feel unattainable. I wrote this poem when I was spending a lot of time in my car — eating, having therapy, writing poems. The car didn’t pass its MOT.