Maenad, a Year or Two In The Making

Written By Mae Kleiman

Content warnings: mentions of depression and dissociation

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I yearn for an ending to this I.
What form shall we take next, my dearest?
The snake? The queen? The mother? The winter?
I, the fool, met you, the crescent, my lunar darling. I watched you wax and wane,
Your pale light illuminated the most vulnerable parts of myself, And you kissed every inch of me,
Every cuneiform scar, relics of an age long since passed.
I kissed you, gently laughed as your body grew bright as I Held your face, and your lips became flame upon mine. You became a brand, etching that memory, marking me yours.
You’ve made it impossible to forget those times, Your dandelion hands grazing my thigh, my neck, Your cloudless eyes above mine…

Soon, it was low tide, and I wept watching you recede.
I wished you had the constancy of the sun,
Not realizing the constant winds and flares it releases. Another I, ever patient, awaits your return, even now.
Little of me has remained static, for good and ill.
The I that waits for you grows smaller, as I make space between I and I, soon to become a galaxy apart.

There’s a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. I love the drama of that fact, but in reality, it’s rather quiet.
It has no desire to consume all light, all matter.
Things fall into it, and one day, it too will evaporate, Returning all it has absorbed to the universe.
Every I, parts still live somewhere inside me, tiny yet massive. An invisible weight, inescapable at the ungodly hours of night. Every I, another nail to bite, another knot in my shoulders.
Let this be a eulogy to every I, even this one.
I was a fool in love, I was a hurt child.
I was lonely, I was scared, I was learning.
I see I, I see all of I. I can love I, I will try.

Mae Kleiman

Mae Kleiman is a trans poet and prose writer based in Los Angeles, CA.

Mae's writing journey started with spoken word poetry in high school. She describes her past self as a closed, insecure teen, and this was an avenue to express the chaos within in a way that felt not just acceptable, but celebrated by her teachers. She loved the ability to meticulously plan what she wanted to say, how she wanted to sound, as opposed to her "usual stumbling over words." Since then, it’s helped her gain much confidence in her oratory abilities.

Poetry and prose are her main mediums, and she usually writes about anything related to the trans experience, and/or what it means to be witnessed and consequently defined. She has been heavily inspired by the works of Walt Whitman, Robert Kurvitz, the Shelleys, and, of course, Sappho.

Her past work includes a thesis in order to complete her English major - it was an examination of the political influences in Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” detailing her clear inspirations from Rousseau’s Enlightenment philosophy, to her father’s proto-anarchist views. She has also written a portfolio containing much of the poetry she developed throughout her college experience, under the guidance of poets Jerry Harp and Mary Szybist.

Mae is currently working on preparing herself for the approaching storm that is NaNoWriMo. She has been yearning to write a longer work dedicated to the transfemmes of her generation, those who emerged from the womb with phones in hand, blue lights penetrating our eyes from the moment of our first tears.

You can find out more about her on Instagram.

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