by nat raum
After Brendan Joyce
i.
it is death’s series of permutations
that creep in like they are degrees
of separation choking me closer.
it is the way this has never felt
just, never warranted in its intensity—
housefires claiming childhood friends.
faulty blood transfusions bearing illness
as a side effect of grandfather’s surgery.
vascular viruses collapsing grandmother’s
lungs, snuffing her heart. it is feeling
consumed by the dark fog which rolls
in each night. it is the fog itself.
ii.
it is the ice of the wrong
lover’s breath on my neck,
of the wrongness that followed
me for a decade from the time
i turned fourteen and started
sinning. it is the way death
was the first to follow me,
ensuring i’d be too much
for anyone in their right mind,
i’m told. it is the number of drinks
i used to down in a night to live
with myself. it is the visceral
ache in my guts when i drink
and no one pays attention
to me. it is the taste of Fireball
on my teenage tongue. it is
the haunting of wrong and
wronger, the calamity that kept
me steeped in the belief i was
nothing but a set of bones
possessed by the past. it is
the fact that in some ways,
i’ve always been a little
right about that.
iii.
it is the tinge and pop of my hipbones, run
well past ragged when i worked behind a bar
and i’m sure the emotional baggage doesn’t
help. it is the daily antidepressant for psychosomatic
nerve damage but also for the crushing depression,
the kind that almost killed me two winters back
when all there was to life was whiskey and loneliness
bracketed by eight-hour shifts in a fluorescent-lit
cubicle. it is the mood stabilizer too, because
when i went off SSRIs, the anxiety came back
swinging. it is the band of tissue spanning heel to toe
that begs me to tear it off when i walk more than a few
blocks, the achilles tendons stretched so tight i can’t
help but walk this way and make my heels throb
at the base. it is the wailing of my wrists and pinkies
when computer work takes over my day and the stiffness
of my knuckles at the end of it. it is the feeling of hot
tea on thinning teeth without dental insurance. it is
the multitude of people who think i’m too young to be
in so much pain all the time, to be so cynical about it all.
it is the way my ankles crack when i climb the stairs.
iv.
it is the fifteenth time a partner had some
hot take about my femininity, at least. it is hard,
cold, unfiltered, the antifeminine. it is the girlhood
that never quite fit, even dressed in toddler-size
pink dresses. it is the language i didn’t find
until twenty-five to explain how it wasn’t just
girlhood—i’ve never felt like a man either.
it is the steps i took to be girl enough, worthy. it is
the way i played the part until it ruined me more
often than not. it is how long it took to live
pleasantly. it is how by the time i learned how to,
there was a generation of politicians waiting, wanting
to wipe me off the face of the planet. it is how petrified
i am sometimes that they might succeed. it is hope
when i feel like fighting. it is dread when i don’t.
v.
it is the feeling of sixty-six
degrees on moisturized skin,
the sounds of wrens and finches
in the oak tree out back. it is
my lover’s ear-to-ear grin and
honeydipped dark eyes, our flesh
fusing under velvet covers. it is
my father’s duck cassoulet
and chicken parmesan on sunday
nights; it is watching vintage
Bravo with my mother when he’s
out of town. it is the plane
to Austin, the train to Boston,
the drive to Durham to see the family
i chose, the way there is always
room at their hearth for me. it
is how i don’t even want one
glass of wine with dinner now. it is
the look back at my starting place
and the first glimpses of the promising
young queer i’ve become. it is the days
where my confidence outshines all
the stars in the sky. it is the refusal
to travel backwards.
nat raum (b. 1996) is a disabled artist, writer, and genderless disaster from Baltimore, MD. They’re the editor-in-chief of fifth wheel press and the author of the abyss is staring back, you stupid slut, and several chapbooks and photography publications. Past publishers of their writing include Delicate Friend, Corporeal Lit, Stone of Madness Press, and ANMLY. Find them online: natraum.com/links.
Ami (they/them) is an Indian-American author, artist, designer, and boxer with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the California Institute of the Arts. They are the Co-Founder of Gutslut Press, as well as the author of Confessions of a Baby Vamp: Letters to John Milton (Gutslut Press ’21), Lipstick[less] Mania: A Ritual For No One (Bottlecap Press ‘22), Into Oblivion (Sweat-Drenched Press ’22), x( )-id </3 (Trickhouse Press ’22), and In Residuum (Kith Books ’23), among others. Their work can be found in numerous places, including Peach Magazine, So It Goes: The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library, and Inverted Syntax, with more forthcoming in Fence. Link: linktr.ee/hotwraithbones Twitter/IG: @HotWraithBones
Graphic Violence 