Where Did My Brooklyn Baby Go?

Losing a girl in the middle of sex and springsteen

a poem for the man whose copy of white nights i stole

She’s a Brooklyn Baby

Who drinks mud tea

With the little girl

Across the hall

Cuts paper with

Her wet fingers

Finds shapes in the bruises your Father

Gifted you last week

After dinner and

Laughs when you come

Home with a black eye and a new

Necktie

Pockets Madonna in a Fur Coat

Into her sleeve during

A dinner party

Her friends think she’s a thief—you never disagreed

But she’s sitting on the

Fire escape

Dog-earing all the right pages

Sabahattin Ali might applaud her

Your hand buried

In her panties

She turns the next page

As if your fingers aren’t deep

Inside her

She pretends she didn’t leave

Lipstick stains

On the couch

When you pushed her head down

Fucked her hard

Like memory’s a muscle

Trying to change

Your fingerprints

To match the rhythm of

Her hips

She needed seven Advils

To stand upright again

A sheet to wrap around her hips

Because you tattooed it on her like

A tramp stamp

She’s been wanting since she

Saw Drew Barrymore wearing

Low-rise jeans on the TV

She swallowed the medicine dry

Her throat was already wet and full

of you

She swore it was like drowning

In something sweet

Her favourite grape flavoured pills

Made for children, you tell her

What are we, then?

She whispers

She moves around your kitchen to Springsteen

Like she’s always danced at kitchen tables at

23:15

Wearing nothing except her

Nudity

Cutlery shaking with the force of her laughter

Food burning from the sound of her lust

She’s a Brooklyn Baby

And she fucks you so

Desperately

It was as if she was already trying to

Forget you

You don’t run your fingers through her hair

You pull at her roots

Because you’re trying to

Remember

A version of her that’s already left

The apartment door open

Her ugly keychain still hanging from the wall

Her shoes still sitting near the patio door

Her hair rips out in chunks and

She thinks

Maybe she’s always wanted to go bald

As you pull at her hair

And you pull at her hair

And you pull at her hair

She thanks you with a kiss on your nipple

Because where did your Brooklyn Baby go?

Makes her way to the bathroom

Still humming Springsteen

Still leaking something foggy

She finds your razor

Because where did your Brooklyn Baby go—

Oh, where did your Brooklyn Baby go

Oh, where did your Brooklyn Baby go

The one who danced naked

To Springsteen

Choked on dry cereal and forgotten papers

Your razor in her hand, your name in her mouth

You check on her

And she’s bald and already wet for you

You whisper her name

She doesn’t answer

The cutlery shakes

And the food is still burning

Her lipstick stains won’t fade

And your White Nights

Is missing

Oh,

Oh,

Oh,

And the razor’s still warm

But she’s not around

The morning after

Where did my Brooklyn Baby go?