“One school night in late 2017, I ran away from home into the winter cold without anything but a phone. Three years prior, I could’ve sworn that I’d run out of tears yet on this night, I found myself running for more than answers. I eventually came across an empty sky on some stretch of familiar land I never seen before. There stood a series of houses which, in the approaching dawn atmosphere, had all lights turned off with the exception of one singular building on the edge. There, as some outlier, radiated the warm bottom floor glow of some strangers home, an abditory, which resembled nothing as to mine. Broken beyond measure and confused, I began fantasizing about the lives of those there between curses underneath my breath to the handful of voicemails piling up. Feet sinking into snow, I stood there for what must’ve seemed like centuries, rather contently, by my sheer unwillingness to turn back. I saw then, a certain beauty in the collaterallness of my being there that night through a vast variety of emotions I would be unable to explain through words alone; that which was ineffable.”

Natkah Nalyec

April 8th, 2022.