Sunburnt Landscapers by Matthew Milia

Sunburnt landscapers in the country club gulch
The entire spring world smells like wet humans
And rotten mulch
And the lilacs
My done-to-death climax
Well, I don’t care
They’re all I’ve got there

The dumpsters behind the bleak tanning salons
The entire spring world is just broken roads and damp coupons
In the after-rain
The smell that I can’t explain
Petrichor mingled in your hair

You look so blissfully high
After you’ve had yourself
A good cry
And I know that
You are my…

Trailing behind the dumb vanity plates
Out past the outrageous Bloomfield Hills mansion estates
The lunch-timers and sad corporate climbers
Are driving home into the hot sun

Last night I slept in a hospital recliner
Next to your bed and I watched the tubes exit your hand
And then I wept alone in a diner
And pitifully prayed that you’re not one

You look so blissfully high
After you’ve had yourself
A good cry
And I know that
You are my…

I wanna list of every kid I used to know
And their current careers
My therapist insists I should let all this go
From my formative years

But the feral spring softness is swarming the offices
Where mutual funds and cummerbunds get rented out
The roads are all paralyzed
We travel the service drives
Searching for the slightest sign that it all might work out

We’re just sunburnt landscapers from the trashier towns
On the north edge of the county
Where the endless love always abounds

Where the oil change places
And terrified faces
Remind me that I’m in my heaven

You look so blissfully high
After you’ve had yourself
A good cry
And I know that
You are my…

Appears on Keego Harbor