Mair Allen
While the Clouds Slowly Lower Themselves Onto the Beach
The waves lap, indifferent.
He asks, do lesbians fake it,
even with each other?
As if we are not quite human,
less layered, or apt to light
two cigarettes after a long night, or pray
for a messenger bird to slash open the sky. I laugh,
as if women don’t practice lying
to each other before we lie
on top of each other; as if I wasn’t the first woman
I pretended to love. Sometimes I fake it
with myself. By it I mean I close my eyes
and imagine those hot clouds seeping inside of me.
By it I mean existing. I am a slow erasure
at the edge of the frame, wavering
mirage of city skyline, empty beach.
I’m afraid I’ve never not faked it.
Some women are overexposed
photographs—time lapsed. Some women are
not women at all, but scratches on the film
you look through to make sense of the image.
You wish. My words canted
at the last, desperate rays of sun.
Mair Allen is a writer living in Minneapolis, MN. A current MFA candidate at Antioch University, their work can be found in Griffel, Kithe, Oroboro, and was the 2020 first place winner of the Mikrokosmos poetry competition.