nat raum
crossing east 30th
perhaps an anomaly, old but not
very wise, as jenny mellor tells miss stubbs
in her living room when she retakes
control of her life—indeed i have
positioned my thumb and index finger
on either side of my circumstances’ trachea
but i am acting in self-defense. i was allegedly
twenty-one (really nineteen) this time
ten years ago, caught in the belly of night
and pbr and all four hours of funky beats
spilling out the doors of the windup space.
eventually we’d ruin it for everyone,
plastered on mixes of vodka and pink
lemonade smuggled in between left and right
tits in a brisk bottle, even tonight forced
to cross our fingers along with unlucky
uber driver and pray to whatever’s out there
that no one throws up in the back
of this minivan. i have climbed mountains
inside of myself since then. i have
snapped apart my bones and reshaped
my being out of the parts of myself
i have managed to hold onto. far too many
things i have known intimately enough
to love have slipped away, wreckage turned
gaping voids in ventricles. still i look
around and my peers’ footprints surrounding
me are the closest i have to a guidebook,
were only my gaze not still nascent. were
only my lungs able to avoid sucking their dust.
throwing rice at people in a greetings & readings
After Steven Leyva
and other shenanigans at hunt valley
town center, harbinger of early-teen
chaos for county kids and current
workplace of my mother, who caught
teenagers in the back hallway doing
all the things i hid in high school. before
the era of being generally disruptive
in a dick's sporting goods, the regal
cinema at the top of the hill became
the host body of both my first date
and my first kiss. then we grew up,
graduated to double dates, cosplaying
adults with every paperthin h&m
clearance rack top and decisive slap
of flip phone slammed shut. who
remembers these things, really? the expanse
of parking lot, before they built joe's crab
shack. the movie where robert pattinson
dies during 9/11. the hot bar chicken
wings my first real boyfriend accidentally
stole from wegmans, back when he was
still the person i fell in love with.
nat raum is a queer disabled artist, writer, and editor based on unceded Piscataway and Susquehannock land in Baltimore. They’re the author of origin trilogy, journal of various worries, and many others. Find them online at natraum.com.
