BACKSEAT

👓 Dear Pen Pals,

There are two days left, and today I want you to listen to Track-6, “Backseat.”

July in Georgia has a particular kind of audacity.

The afternoon in “Backseat” “refuses to hurry.” It's eighty-two degrees. Windows cracked. Cicadas doing what cicadas do—being unnecessarily loud while contributing absolutely nothing to the situation. The asphalt is hot, and somewhere three streets over, somebody is clearly having a better afternoon than everybody else. LYRICS: ATL - A TOXIC LOVE

There's a car.

Not new. Not pretending to be.

Clean, fly, cared for.

There's an old drive-in off Moreland—the one that never reopened after COVID—and an iPad propped against the dashboard because apparently we're here to watch a movie.

Sure.

We are.

We absolutely came here for cinema.

At some point:

“Did we care who was watching? / Maybe. / Maybe not enough to stop.” LYRICS: ATL - A TOXIC LOVE

Listen.

I'm grown.

Keep reading.

THE DETAILS THAT STAY

Memory is strange.

I realized this year that trauma has done some peculiar things to mine.

I push people's names down.

Entire blocks of time disappear.

There are conversations I know happened because other people remember having them with me. Whole stretches of my life feel less like memories and more like somebody gave me the synopsis of a movie I apparently starred in.

The moments are gone.

Yet some details survive.

Weather.

A smell.

The way somebody looked at you.

A ridiculous joke.

The exact second the energy in a room changed.

A song you can no longer listen to casually.

The tiny things can remain long after your brain has packed an entire month into a box, taped it shut and written NOPE across the top.

“Backseat” has all those tiny details.

The heat.

The car.

The drive-in.

The iPad.

The anticipation.

The laughter.

The questionable decision-making.

I can see the whole thing.

Crystal clear.

Every damn detail.

Which is remarkable considering—

none of this shit ever happened.

😂😂😂

GOTCHA.

“Backseat” is completely fictional.

The whole damn thing.

I made it up.

I hope I had you.

Poetry doesn't always have to be testimony.

Poetry can be possibility.

The writer isn't always documenting a memory. She might be building one she'd like to have.

Apparently, somewhere in the middle of writing an album about heartbreak, abandonment, survival and healing, my imagination said:

Okay, girl. Enough. Can we have some fun now?

Yes.

Yes, we can.

APPARENTLY I WRITE FAN FICTION ABOUT MY OWN FUTURE

I would love for “Backseat” to happen one day.

Not necessarily word for word. I'm flexible.

The drive-in, though?

Keep that.

The summer heat.

Keep that.

The ridiculous attempt to pretend we're interested in the movie.

Definitely keep that.

The spontaneity of being with somebody and not needing to know what the moment means six months from now before you're allowed to enjoy it tonight?

Keep that too.

My actual life requires calendars, flights, call sheets, hotel confirmations, sound checks and enough logistics to remove spontaneity from almost anything.

People send me emails marked URGENT about matters that have apparently survived quite comfortably for eleven business days without my involvement.

I plan things for a living.

I don't always want a plan.

No committee meeting.

No five-year strategy.

No emotional feasibility study.

Just—

You wanna?

Yep.

Move over.

THE SEX ISN'T ACTUALLY MY FAVORITE PART

Plot twist number two.

The most romantic part of “Backseat” happens afterward.

We leave laughing.

My bare feet are on the dashboard, white toenails tapping offbeat, because I'm Southern and apparently Fictional Sheba has decided the dashboard is an ottoman.

We're swapping stories about future road trips and imaginary cities.

Then we wonder what this night will sound like when we remember it years later. LYRICS: ATL - A TOXIC LOVE

I love that.

There isn't a giant declaration.

Nobody promises forever.

Nobody pauses the evening to negotiate the next twelve months.

Two people had a beautiful, ridiculous night.

They drove home imagining there might be more beautiful, ridiculous nights ahead.

That's hope.

YOU JUST GO WITH IT

So much of “A Toxic Love” comes from things I actually lived.

Pain I didn't request.

Lessons I would happily have learned from a pamphlet.

“Backseat” gives me something else.

It reminds me that my imagination still knows how to flirt.

After everything, I can still imagine wanting somebody.

Trusting a moment.

Being desired without wondering what the bill for that desire will be later.

I can still imagine intimacy followed by laughter instead of anxiety.

I can imagine looking over at somebody on the ride home and thinking:

Well, that was a terrible decision.

Then smiling because it was also an excellent one.

That feels like healing too.

Not being over everything.

Not forgetting what hurt.

Not pretending the past didn't happen.

Just realizing the part of you capable of imagining something good survived it.

Everything doesn't have to become forever to have been worth experiencing.

You make the reservation.

You miss the exit.

The movie never gets watched.

Your underwear does not return home under the same chain of custody in which it departed.

These things happen.

You stop trying to control the destination and enjoy where you are.

You just go with it.

It might even—

turn out okay.

Which leaves us with the only truly pressing question raised by Track-6:

WHERE ARE THE 2026 DRIVE-INS, THOUGH?!

Apparently I have plans.

Mind your business.

Then send me the address. 😂

“A Toxic Love” For Your Grammy Consideration in the Spoken Word-Poetry category: Queen Sheba x Chanté Moore x Lil Ronnie

🗳️ R1 VOTING ENDS THIS THURS OCT 22

📖 TheQueenSheba.live/blog