Christmas from a Deadmall by Matthew Milia

Mid-November
100.3
Have yourself
A Merry Little Christmas, baby

I hardly ever leave the house
I wish that I was back
In your little red shack

I am home from war or some tour of some blurry life
To some November world where
You're not my girl or my wife

Drive to Somerset Mall and my sweat pants fall
Move down Square Lake Road
In broken code
In a trance, all

That I could ever need
Is to know there's no loss
What could supersede
Your warm sheets, my Ms. Santa Claus

There's the subdivision
That my nana lives in, where
Christmas lives in basement boxes and
90s sitcom television

Mid-November
WNIC
I'll be home for Christmas
Alone with Bing Crosby

Drive down two-seventy-five
Inside my heated orb
Pretend I'm picking up your
Absent ghost from the airport

But I woke up in Frandor Plaza
In the middle of the night
There was no one there
Just blinding light

In fifteen years, Somerset Mall will be
Just like them all
Summit Place
Dump it all to waste

I pass the white roadside domes
Where the past plays indoor soccer
I pass the bright mansion homes
Where the dusk collects in lockers
I pass the night as it combs
Its way into my adult hair
I pass the light as the night
Stings youth with its sharp air

Merry Christmas, everyone
I see my world so undone
And gone
But where to?

Oh, you
Happy New Year too

(Last New Year's you past through here on the way to your new life and in the childhood bedroom of my father's house I made believe you were my wife.
Your car got stained white in the blizzard world, looking frozen like it had traveled through time through that blizzard world we knew together.
You left and I can't make coffee without being overwhelmed by the simultaneous reminder and absence of your simple sweetness.)

Merry Christmas, coffee pot
It's beginning to look a whole lot like
Christmas