Mercury Sable by Matthew Milia

I can hear your nearing Mercury Sable
Growl beneath the tunnel as you make your way over
It rattles like a busted guitar cable
And promises ex-boyfriends made that got left over
Now it’s you and me and tea at the breakfast table
Nursing our amazement and a small hangover

Whatever came before
Your eyes in the morning
Has blurred into a boring little episode of nothing

When you ran into my landing
Jumped into my arms
No one told me love would hold me
Ever again, despite a life of constant false alarms
And all the neighbors saw me laughing so hysterically
All that I could do to keep from crying

And I’m sorry
I can’t make sense
Of something so completely
Intense

We walk toward the water
Where the freighters scrape the land
We pass the ancient motels
Where the folks pay by the hour-hand
Lots of strange concoctions popping up this spring
The garbage and the dandelions blossom like an offering
For you and me and the bad joke I just told
We laugh at all our dumb luck
And the house we say we’ll buy before we get too old
Where maybe our kids’ll pull pranks
For now we walk through Hubbard Farms
And kick discarded nitrous oxide whip-it tanks
That the joyride people suck down
To make the woken nightmare
Not feel like such a letdown
And they could hear your nearing Mercury Sable
Growl beneath the tunnel as you make your way over

When you ran into my landing
Jumped into my arms
No one told me love would hold me
Ever again, despite a life of constant false alarms
And all the neighbors saw me laughing so hysterically
All that I could do to keep from crying
And I’m sorry
I can’t make sense
Of something so completely
Intense

Appears on On the Northline