a photo bro asked me a patronizing question in 2016 & I am still thinking about it

i sip apple pie shots under the dirtchurch
neons & member number thirteen of my little
black book asks me what i find most important

in a photograph & he speaks for himself first, says
exactly what i expect: beauty. i mumble;
it’s an impossible question & he leaves me

for his ex two days later. i don’t think about it
again for years until honesty smacks me in the face.
because the truth is absolutely everything &

i am nothing without somewhere to siphon
all of this urgency in my veins. the truth is, i am
a fucking wreck, okay? i am the storm

which sweeps out a village & barrels into another
tempest. once a week or so i think about how
i am still alive despite my nineteen-year-old

penchant for getting into strangers’ cars & i
haven’t gotten any less vulnerable. i have truths
to be told—i am far too easily collapsible.

& i am far too silent in my fear of provoking
flight. & anyway, barthes was right, the photographer
makes permanent the truth, so why shouldn’t i strive

for a photograph that moonlights as a truth-teller?
i can’t help but try new things. i pull silver, catch light,
scribble in sketchbooks until there is closure.

until i spread myself across naked pages, stitched
together coptic-style? is there truth, bound & numbered,
on a shelf? then there is nothing else left to say.

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nat raum (b. 1996) (@gr8earlofhell) is a disabled artist, writer, and genderless disaster based on unceded Piscataway and Susquehannock land in Baltimore. They have a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA from the University of Baltimore. They’re the editor-in-chief of fifth wheel press and the author of you stupid slut, the abyss is staring back, random access memory, and several chapbooks and photobooks. Find them online at natraum.com.