After “400 Lux” by Lorde


i should have been driving east 
this whole time, lavender shadows
and guava highlights emerging 
from the landscape as i barrel, hollow
but brave, through suburbia in my civic
and flimsy pink sunglasses. i used to
glide north or south through lush
greens swaying to the prelude
of an evening storm, pressing on
faster than i should to stay beneath blue,
beneath the blending of bisexual lighting
before my very eyes. i should have
seen the sunset like this, driving
further from an active horizon through
a smattering of vinylclad houses
set on crew-cut lawns, stoic
and imposing. i could never call it
my life, model homes fabricated
to be spread out across an old farmstead.
i could only envy its idylls, flamingo 
and lilac spots in the sky shifting as i find
a new gear on the road winding east 
from my parents’. the quiet roars around me
and i wonder where else i can find this.

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Author note: This poem is inspired by a specific stretch of road in Baltimore County, Maryland and the way the houses and trees look when the sun is setting in the summer. I imagined what it would be like to photograph the light and feed it through these pastel-toned Lightroom filters I downloaded a while back, and then it became this piece.

nat raum is a disabled artist, writer, and genderless disaster based on unceded Piscataway and Susquehannock land in Baltimore. They’re the editor-in-chief of fifth wheel press and the author of the abyss is staring back, random access memory, camera indomita, and others. Find them online at natraum.com.