Safe Drive, Stay Alive Poem by Guinevere Eveleigh

Is it the roads we will meet our deaths?
It is what the teachers exhort us of at school
Men in neon uniforms come and warn us of the dangers
That teenage adrenalin can do

The speed it threatens to destroy us
As the growling belly revs in my ears
My fingers claw and grip the seats
I feel the world is slipping behind
It can't catch up
I have left all aegis eating the dust

But it is a poison that pumps throughout my brain
It is a rushing river in the canals of my veins
Blurs of colours passing me by
The heartbeat is frantic telling me to slow down

But I don't listen
I feel alive
I scream and it sounds like the essence of everything fun
I feel like this is what youth should feel like in its zenith

But the world is now tumbling
My yells are now those warding off approaching death
My heart is deafened by the sound of metal crunching like bones
Webs crack in the windscreen and I dangle upside down like a spider
I fear for my life

Something happens
The world goes black like an empty room
I think I ‘am dying
I see the car and it looks dead too
Its corpse now mangled and bruised with dirty blood

In the field streaked with tracks of mud
I see a white horse approach me
The sun behind him glows orange like the yolk of an egg
I squint to see his face as I expect a knight
But instead I see a statuesque skeleton armed with a scythe
I fall to my knees and I ‘am filled with dread
From his tongue-absent and lipless mouth
Comes a sentence I will never forget
'Why didn't you listen? ' he asked
'I did, ' I replied 'But I never heeded the warnings'
And so now I die now in the roads where I have met my death