Salad Bars by Matthew Milia

Salad bars in this frigid town
Where the repo’d cars are blood-red brown
October stars flash numbers down for keno

Candy corn in an empty cart
You still mourn the brand-new start
That ended with a broken heart
Yeah, we know

But somehow it doesn’t make you cry
To know the junk mail that you and I
Will still receive long after we’ve been long-dead

So I stop to give the psoriasis
That’s there above your eye a kiss
And sip a beer to hear just what this song said

No one’s nineteen for very long
Everything I mean, I’ve said it wrong

So do you see the danger?
And don’t you be a stranger
Yeah, that’s what your mom said
And it broke your heart apart
And then it sent you to the start of it again

Apartments passed down friend to friend
Till you’re standing at the decade’s end
With nothing really left to spend but more time

You’re in Madison Heights
When the morbid fascination bites
That’s triggered by the dull lights of some slow climb

Not so special after all
In the deathlike center of the mall
Where the broken skylight sunbeams fall on you

I flash to the children’s hospital
With the gown and IV that I pull
Behind me to the game room draped in blue

I never saw that blue so thin
I never heard from you again
You never knew this all could end, yeah we know

Now it’s salad bars in this frigid town
Where the repo’d cars are breaking down
October stars flash bright as the casino

No one’s nineteen for very long
Everything I mean, I’ve said it wrong

So do you see the danger?
And don’t you be a stranger
Yeah, that’s what your mom said
And it broke your heart apart
And then it sent you to the start of it again

Appears on Keego Harbor