Atlantic City

I put her up in a hotel room

And I played the slots

Outside it’s cold

But it’s warming up

She doesn’t know my name

And her belly’s getting big

We pay for the room

With t-shirt sales

And odd jobs

I do a few miles

Outside of town

But I come back

I always come back

They say it’s better

If you come when you’re a kid

Because you don’t see the bad

Just the lights

And the Boardwalk

And the capitalist ventures

That look like candy

For the sugar-deprived

One odd job had me

Put a gun

In someone’s mouth

But someone else

Pulled the trigger

Up in the room

Baby clothes

Get put down on the floor

One blue pair

Of little pajamas

And one pink dress

With the name Angel on it

I tell her it’s bad luck

To name a kid Angel

But she’s got Catholic upbringing

And Irish pride

The guy work works

At the store near the museum

Told me he’d give me

Twenty bucks

To take pictures of her

Said pregnant girls

Go for more these days

I told him she’s not

Photogenic

We can make the ends

But we can’t make ‘em meet

She stopped smoking

But she can’t stop wanting

Her 5 o’clock desperation

Lemon the edge

With a backrub right after

I do my best to take her mind off things

But her mind’s like a kid

It’s going to run

Towards all the things

That’ll hurt it

We just gotta get the baby here

And then she’ll be up for a trip

To where her parents live

Somewhere hours from here

Where the only lights are street lights

And they’re few and far between

I leave every night

To sell a few more shirts

And collect a few more debts

And she asks me

If I’m coming back

And I say ‘Yeah, I’ll always come back’

Then one night I don’t

And she starts to feel queasy

Gets in the tub

Cause she doesn’t know

What else to do

The escort next door

Hears her screaming

And against her better judgment

She calls the police

The baby makes it

The girl in the bathtub does not

By then I was already

Tied up in a basement

With a guy beating the shit out of me

Asking how I knew who I knew

And who I was working for

And was I out of my mind

Waving a gun around

If I had to wait

For someone else to pull the trigger

And this time the other gun jammed

And this time the guy they sent me with

The one who’s not too scared to shoot

He got shot

And I got tied up

And I’m never going to see the baby

And I’m never coming back

But they untie me

I don’t know why

They call me ‘kid’

They think I’m a kid

I don’t tell them otherwise

I come back

And she’s in the tub

But she’s fine

Just needed a bath

And the baby’s still weeks away

And the baby will be born

In a run-down hospital

But it’ll be born healthy

And we’ll make it wherever

Her parents are

And they’ll move us into the basement

And we’ll fucking hate

Every minute of it

But sometimes we think

About the other side

The other side

Where I don’t come back

And everything else

Comes after that

Now I go out drinking

In a shitty little town

That’s nothing like

Atlantic City

And before I go out

She tries to quiet down

The screaming kid

So she can ask me

If I’m coming back

And I say ‘I’ll come back’

But now even I don’t believe it

Even though
I know it’s true

How do you not believe something

You know it’s true?

Where it’s a lie coming out of your mouth

But five hours later

It’s the truth

How do you do that?

How do you keep

Coming back?