Inherited Cars by Matthew Milia

The Hail Mary you sent me
Was a full week tardy
I just wanna be the cigarette you sneak
Outside your family Thanksgiving party

And the resentment’s grown larger
It’s fully juiced on your forgotten phone charger
That’s still plugged in beneath my bedside table
It channels something I’m unable to label

And when I go out walking
And the dusk sounds like my past lives are talking
I don’t wanna see the sun
I don’t wanna see anyone

What remains now
But inherited cars
And the stars’ smoky evacuation?

If you tried to abduct me
I’d make it back
To sleep in the black high school tomb
Time can’t corrupt the immaculate lack
That’s left there in the back bedroom
Or steal the feel that’s ours
As the dusk shadows
Straddle the bars
Of our inherited cars

You eyeball yourself in the gas station mirror
And set off the auto hand dryer
You can’t recognize your face
But you recognize the fear
That you might be a compulsive liar

You drive past the complex
Where your grandparents answered the phone
At the end of their days
You’ve lost any context
For the world that was transferred
To you in the subtlest ways

What remains now
But inherited cars
And the stars’ smoky evacuation?

If you tried to abduct me
I’d make it back
To sleep in the black high school tomb
Time can’t corrupt the miraculous lack
That’s left there in the back bedroom
Or steal the feel that’s ours
As the dusk shadows
Straddle the bars
Of our inherited cars

Appears on Keego Harbor