THIS IS NOT WHAT THEY MEAN BY “COPYWRITING WITH EMOTION”

today i wrote it’s almost fall, y’all

in a newsletter and i was not ready for how

soon my body would recoil

upon hearing it. i was surprised

i broke a sweat today, forehead kissed like some

bivalve in the stale cupcake air.

last week i realized i only

have one kind of dream now, the kind where i

can never tell it’s a questline until

it is, and it’s obvious, and then

there is almost always water. i am driving

over the bay bridge and

the floods overtake us all.

i am in a beach house and the house is as tall

as the waves. i am on a boat

and the surface of the lake

skims my toes and swallows me by my ankles

into oily murk. it is almost

october again and where am i

now, besides my nightmares? sometimes i want

to peel back my skin and say

damn bitch, you live like this?

mostly i want to sleep through the night. mostly

i wish it was not october,

or maybe that this cluster

of thirty-one days held something besides

a flesh memory of blurred

boundaries and thoughtless

boys. besides a longing i couldn’t explain

until my chart read borderline

personality disorder.

this time may very well be different, but still

each october, i speckle

sheets with saline

from eyes, then fall silent into sleep. i only have

one kind of dream now.

---

nat raum (b. 1996) is a disabled artist, writer, and genderless disaster based on unceded Piscataway land in Baltimore. They’re an MFA candidate and also the editor-in-chief of fifth wheel press. Past publishers of their work include Delicate Friend, Corporeal Lit, and ANMLY. Find them online: natraum.com/links