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dear diary, never have i ever eaten gushers in a dive bar before right now and goddamn, is this ever magicalβi am loathe to use the word gush to describe something called gushers but how else can i possibly explain the soft squish of high-fructose corn syrup as incisors tear them asunder? tropical tastes coat soft palate with tangerine and curaΓ§ao crush, hold the vodka but keep the scene in this dive bar, where i am sitting in front of the padres game projected eight feet wide across the back wall, rustling the ice in my club soda with a plastic straw and prying each cluster of congealed sugar and gelatin from their crinkling yellow bag. dear diary, am i footloose and fancy free now? i canβt seem to tell through all this euphoria.
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dear diary, sometimes i wish i was a beautiful fool, which is not to say that beautiful fools don't have trauma but moreso that my imagination longs for an alternate universe where i can live in bubbles, unaware of the pain of existence. dear diary, i am really just saying this because i cannot fathom the relative ease of being a milquetoast instagram girlie with her parents' credit cards and a five- figure follow count for some fucking reason. you know how when you say beetlejuice three times, he appears? thatβs how i feel i conjure this nemesisβsimply by speaking. dear diary, did you know that itβs cool now to act detached as splitting chains, to steel your gaze until you see the world in gray and care about nothing? i hate it. i want to scream BEGONE, INFLUENCER at the void of my social media feed. dear diary, maybe i am a fool for expecting an algorithm to nourish me, but i just want to see something real. something dripping, receding into dust, collapsing. is that a lot to ask for?
nat raum is the poet laureate of the void; their corporeal form lives in Baltimore. Theyβre the author of the abyss is staring back, random access memory, camera indomita, and many others. Find them online at natraum.com or astral projecting inside a Royal Farms