Even Angels Burn
by Kristin Garth, Regular Contributor

 

Even the angels burn, in second grade 

you learn inside your first recurring dream,

Sabrina at the scene. Somehow you made 

it to eighteen, tv detective team

you are not skinny, pretty enough to

belong.  It does not take long to go all

wrong. Smoky staircase glamorous gumshoes 

all choke while Kris Munroe ahead will call —

There’s fire at this end, too.  This death becomes 

familiar to you though kids will say you

cannot die in dreams. You will overcome 

the odds, it seems, in tight jeans, high heels shoes.

You never see in dreams your father’s face.

His flames are your last touch on this staircase. 

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Author’s Note: This is a recurring dream I started having in early elementary school of dying in flames on a staircase with the Charlie’s Angels. I had this dream even into adulthood.  When people would say to me how do you think you will die?  The kind of conversation grim games people play, I would always say fire because of this dream.  People told me you couldn’t die in a dream, and I would think yeah, well, I have a lot of bad luck.  People’s parents should abuse them either and that happened to me as well. 

Ironically, my abuse, I did not dream about in a literal way but I have come to see as I’ve aged that this dream was about my father, a fire fighter who abused me.  I was a little girl in the 70’s and Charlie’s Angels were my first strong female role models on television.  I feel they were in my dream because I wanted them to save me but the power of misogyny I was facing was too strong.  It was my greatest fear I would never escape him.  The book I’m publishingwith APEP Publications, to which this sonnet belongs, examines this particular tool and symbol of misogyny fire as it has destroyed many women in history and society.  In life, it did not destroy me, but in my dreams, my greatest fears it did so many times.  I suppose that is why shining light on this very real threat to women became an obsession of mine.  

The Stakes is forthcoming from APEP Publications.

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