nat raum

i’m in your walls, dwelling with cobwebs. history dictates i will expire here, between two-by-fours and plaster, never again illuminated. i have subsisted so long on a back burner’s heat that i have grown accustomed to stasis, goosebumps. i once walked around in a kilt and stockings every winter—this is still a new depth of frigidity.

here’s the thing: i have wanted to prove history wrong for years. even suspended in airless black chasm, i hold onto facsimiles of hope that when i reach the grave, i carry even a trace of love with me to whatever exists beyond. if nothing else, i believe, in the way some would say they were put here to be mothers, that i was put here to be a lover. i am a skeptic of fate, but i wonder why i have never broken the barrier of love, instead loving those who merely tolerate me—i am painfully aware of my shortcomings, how much space i truly take up. but i also know the way i make ardor an obsession and cannot believe no one wants to be loved like they are a yellow dwarf at the center of a galaxy.