Chrissy Stegman




I drove seven hours
through rain. Ferrum pulsing
like a sore tooth,
to see if the house stood still
and it did but wrong now, wrong
painted green, not white,
a color like forgetting my father’s voice.
I had a question
lodged in my throat but
your heavy pit—
I wasn’t allowed to swallow.
How do you just drive away
as if leaving were only a turning,
as though
the house, the land
these ghosts were the only things
that ever held me close.
I want to pull the rug out
from under memory.
The cemetery was still there,
bones planted deep, ancestors
staying buried,
that was the easiest thing.
I want to unravel
I want to say something profound
about the tire swing spinning me in circles,
about how the sky spoke to me
through leaves, through wind
but really
I’m just afraid
I’m the stranger here,
telling a story
I barely recognize
& somehow, that feels like the truth.





Chrissy Stegman is a poet/writer from Baltimore, Maryland. Recent work has appeared in/forthcoming: Rejection Letters, Gone Lawn, Gargoyle Magazine, Anti-Heroin Chic, Stone Circle Review, Fictive Dream, Inkfish, The Voidspace, The Madrigal, 5 Minutes, Ucity Review, and BULL. She is a 2023 and 2025 BOTN nominee.