Sara Mae: BIOLUMINESCENCE • Cleaver Magazine

Sara Mae
BIOLUMINESCENCE

The pregnancy scare skulks through bay grasses.
It tips us over like cows & drains our peach liqueur.
Flashlights under the bleachers illuminating grope & teen
& tooth & wick, a stick rattling the jellyfish to yield shine.
I was 15, sneaking out to the 7-11 where I had perfected
straddling someone on a skateboard, coming home
a root system of bug bites. My first pregnancy test
all because a boy had fingered me. I think I knew
that I wasn’t pregnant, that I was just practicing,
reverent for the monsters we only face in daylight.
Years later, today & beast bright & the cashier asks
if I want a bag for that & I nod, afraid for others to see
what I carry. She says, I’ve got you, the lighthouse,
the moorless vessel, premonition in high waters, voice
for miles over a body of water like slumber party incantation.
& praise the mornings, revealing our glowing aloneness,
a single pink line balanced on the bones of the clawfoot tub.
Who was that creature I was just beginning to talk to?

Sara Mae is a white, queer poet and fashion witch raised between Baltimore and Annapolis, Maryland. Her work can be found in Peach Mag, Pigeon Pages, Breakwater Review, and elsewhere. Their first chapbook, Priestess of Tankinis, is out via Game Over Books. In her free time, she is learning burlesque in the studio or in her bedroom, and writing songs for her project The Noisy. If they could go to dinner with any famous person, they wouldn’t care who it was as long as there was Old Bay on the food.