Abigail by Matthew Milia

Abigail, the shore is frozen
Our tar trails have been bulldozing down
Your sharpened frown
Once had me possessed

Do you recall the crippled summer?
Your family all was in deep slumber
And oh how I loved their ways
When Leland’s haze still lingered
On my shadow

Your brother he didn’t have to die
Your mother she didn’t have to cry
Your father didn’t have to ask why
Summer was on your chest
As your eyes glow

All our drugstore lawns blew cool so fast
The mill was never built to last
The torturous thrill of sweating grass
Is this town’s only sorrowed
Trampled blanket

And if I was branded to your foyer
Through passing carpenters and lawyers
Agrarians and God’s own soldiers
I would never make it

Do you still dream of dangerous hotels
Wrapped in glares and daffodil smells
With your bare feet buried in weeds?

I still dream of snarled backyards
And being chased through nighttime’s discards
Where my fence reddens, rusts, and bleeds

And the curbs are haunted by the killers
Of memories of your back pillars
Where nothing wakens as it seems

All our rooms are hopeful mornings
Left like tombs when nights are swarming
And branching feathers fan our dreams

And your star was the saddest symbol
Flickered with your mother’s thimble
Pitiful and sun-soaked soggy
Beautiful inside the muggy
Ashamed of our bodies in the stream

Ah but spring’s dumbed voice is just like yours
And if I had a choice I’d do my chores
And my work would dumbfound
The restlessness found in you

And no one else could understand the truth
Of the soil burning back to youth
It’s just something that we found
But now it all thaws damp around you

And the streets are dry and bare, but they’re humming
The rooftops where the air stops coming down
To listen for the sound
Of the tests that surround you
Abigail

I said, “Abigal the shore is frozen!”
Our tar trails, they’re all bulldozen now
Your bygone sounds are cicada-bound
They’re so shrilling, and night-smoke tarry
You should spill them into the starry
They are children, and no one’s sorry