Honeybee

by Mateer, Trista;

  for the nights in your bed and the days

  on the other side of the room,

  for the years I thought it was romantic

  to be a secret,

  for the size of that closet.

  The Ocean Always Looked Like You: Reprise

  At the beach,

  I put my ear to a conch shell

  and tell myself

  I only hear your name.

  It sounds an awful lot

  like just the ocean.

  Ask Your Mother About Starving

  You were born hungry, baby.

  You were born with an open mouth and empty hands.

  You came into this life with a starving heart.

  I know better than anyone that you cannot fill it

  with fence posts or china patterns.

  All those replaceable things

  they say add up to a good life.

  You can’t fill it with people either.

  Don’t go trying to build your home like a house of cards

  in the mouth of a lover who breathes too hard at night.

  They’re only going to knock you down.

  You are almost always going to want more

  than someone else can give.

  Almost always.

  Barefoot Molly

  Once, we made plans to start a band and call it Barefoot Molly. Once, we bought a temporary tattoo from a twenty-five cent machine and I fake-tattooed your ass in the bathroom of Regal Cinema. Once, we sat in your mother’s minivan parked on the road in front of my house and you held my hand while you asked why nobody else wanted to kiss you. Once, you spent six months sending me nudes and then pretended it never happened. Once, I said I’d do anything for you and I meant it. Once, you told me you’d never loved anyone the way you loved me. Once, we slept curled around each other on your parents’ fold out couch and you woke me with a mug of hot tea in the morning and it felt like life was moving too slow. Once, you called yourself the Sam to my Frodo. Once, you called my heart a bitter animal stuck in a trap. Once, you Skyped me just to sit in lingerie and play love songs on your old guitar. Once, you made me take photos of you laying on my bed in lingerie for your new boyfriend. Once, when you were making dinner, you asked me not to watch you put together your secret pasta sauce but I did from the hall, and it was mostly just Campbell’s Tomato Soup and crushed garlic. Once, you chased me through that kitchen with a video camera and we were both laughing and laughing and laughing.

  This Went All Wrong

  You were never supposed to be a choice.

  You were never supposed to be a lesson,

  a hurdle,

  a thing to learn from

  and overcome.

  So That’s About It

  The voicemail you left

  on my twenty-second

  birthday is still stuck

  in my phone. And by

  stuck, I mean I can’t

  bring myself to delete it.

  And by in my phone, I

  mean I got a new phone

  so I actually transferred

  it to my laptop.

  Sometimes I listen to it

  when I can’t remember

  what you sound like.

  Thames St.

  When I woke today,

  my whole front lawn was dotted with dandelions.

  All I could think about

  was that summer we spent in Baltimore

  when her hair turned out yellow in every photograph we took,

  and how I haven’t been back since I kissed her

  with a mouth full of gelato

  and she laughed against my teeth.

  I never tell the whole truth in my poems.

  I wanted them to be better than us.

  The Muse Bites Back, Or The Poem In Which I Berate Myself Because She Won’t

  after Yena Sharma Purmasir

  I KNOW THEY SAY

  THERE ARE TWO SIDES TO EVERY STORY,

  BUT I DON’T THINK I’VE READ

  A SINGLE TRUE THING

  YOU’VE WRITTEN ABOUT ME.

  I DON’T KNOW

  HOW YOU COULD MAKE A LOVE STORY

  OUT OF WHATEVER THAT WAS,

  HOW YOU COULD TURN ME INTO THE VILLAIN

  WHEN YOU’RE THE ONE WHO LEFT.

  REMEMBER: YOU’RE THE ONE WHO LEFT.

  YOU’RE THE ONE WHO ASKED

  FOR YOUR BOOKS BACK

  AND BOUGHT A PLANE TICKET

  AND NEVER SPOKE TO ME AGAIN.

  I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU WROTE ALL OF THAT DOWN.

  I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU QUOTED MY LOVE LETTERS.

  I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU USED MY VOICEMAILS.

  I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU TOOK THIS PRIVATE THING

  AND USED IT TO GET YOUR FOOT IN THE DOOR.

  Okay

  I couldn’t sleep last night because I don’t know

  what you eat for breakfast anymore. I don’t know

  if you still wear my old clothes or if you threw them out

  when you threw me out.

  I read somewhere that it’s okay to miss people

  even if you don’t want them in your life anymore;

  and I hope that’s true. I hope everything I feel is okay.

  I just want to leave your name on a page somewhere and never need to come back to it.

  A Love Poem For Myself Because I’m Sick Of Writing About You

  I hope one day

  somebody loves you

  so much

  that they see violets

  in the bags under your eyes,

  sunsets in the downward arch

  of your lips

  that they recognize you

  as something green,

  something fresh and still growing

  even if sometimes

  you are growing sideways

  that they do not waste their time

  trying to fix you

  So You’re Engaged—So What?

  I found out secondhand

  and skipped

  all five stages of grief.

  (I went right to tequila.)

  Ongoing Construction

  When I think of our separate futures,

  I picture concrete chipping away,

  and the ghost of our happiness

  dancing on top of the rubble.

  Reminder For Times Like This:

  Embrace the days

  on which you are still hurting.

  Sore muscles have always

  been a sign of growth.

  The Blue Lagoon

  Autumn. Cheeks flushed from the cool air. I wore my grandfather’s flannel shirt over my dress instead of a coat. You pulled off your gloves in the driver’s seat. Held a warm palm to my cheek. Asked me what kind of face to make to get someone to want to kiss you. Instead of flirting, I started quoting The Little Mermaid. I ran inside afterwards, straight up to my room. Sat on the edge of my bed with two fingers pressed to my lips. Singing “Kiss The Girl” in your car was the first time I’d ever wanted to put my mouth on your skin.

  The night you told me that the more people I kissed, the dirtier I would become, was the first time I wondered why anyone would ever want to put their mouth on your skin.

  I guess neither one of us came away clean.

  Unsent Text Message

  I dreamt about you

  three different times

  last night.

  I need this to be over.

  38 Days

  I am still cutting my hair over the bathroom sink and taking the weather personally. It’s been a year since the last poem. Since the last time I picked up a pen and thought about writing your name somewhere on the page. Everything feels so small in your absence. My whole world could fit on the head of a pin.

  Body Language

  Conversations about her always start the same way. Someone asks: what does your tattoo mean?

  And I say, I loved somebody too much once.

  They shake their head like I don’t kno
w what I’m talking about, like I’m one of those parents with selective hearing. They shake their head and point. No, not that one. The one on your foot.

  I say, every part of me means the same thing.

  Leftovers Pt. 2

  I do not believe all love has an expiration date;

  I just believe ours did.

  I have put to shame every night I thought I wouldn’t get through without you.

  Thank You

  The smell of your hair puts my stomach in knots.

  I want to lay roses at your feet.

  I want to pray at the church of your hands.

  I want to thank you for every awful thing you ever did to me.

  No one will ever be able to knock the wind out of me again.

  Not like that.

  Not like you.

  37 Days (Reclaiming The Bee)

  Still writing about you feels like needless repetition.

  It feels like sneaking into a neighbor’s backyard

  just to look around.

  It feels like carving my own name

  into anything I can get my hands on.

  Still writing about you feels like screaming

  into someone else’s abyss.

  A void that echoes back and back and back:

  I AM NOT YOURS.

  YOU ARE NOT MINE.

  I WILL NEVER MAKE THIS MISTAKE AGAIN.

  YOU CAN LOVE AND LOVE AND LOVE

  AND YOU STILL WON’T BELONG TO ANYONE

  AND NO ONE WILL BELONG TO YOU.

  IN THE END WE WON’T EVEN HAVE THE PAIN OF IT.

  YOU WERE NOT THE FIRST THING TO STING ME

  AND YOU WILL NOT BE THE LAST.

  It’s All So Light

  Nobody is in love with me and everything is still warm. Still soft. Still rosewater and a typewriter ribbon. Still cookbooks and salt air and sheer black lingerie. Still red lipstick. Still mostly kind. Still often uncomplicated. Still mints at the bottom of my purse, hair held back, pulse thumping through skin. Still sweet tea in a pitcher on the kitchen counter, a cold glass with three lemon slices, a full ice cube tray.

  Ode To The Purple Mug I Found In Marshalls

  God, it will feel so good

  to have something warm

  to wrap my hands around

  at two in the morning

  again.

  Think of the quiet days

  we’ll spend together.

  Think of the packing and unpacking,

  the leases, the emptiness of moving,

  the homes we’ll leave behind together.

  The tableware you won’t match with.

  God, think about that.

  Think about how out of place you’ll look

  next to my great grandmother’s china teacups

  and all the silverware I’ve pilfered

  from work.

  I’m living alone

  and I still don’t have my own dishes.

  Last month, I lived entirely

  off of paper plates.

  Say you’ll come home with me

  anyway.

  Loud, Loud, Loud

  In a dream,

  I see you walking out of the post office

  and I swallow my pride like a lit match.

  I say,

  I’m sorry for hurting so publicly.

  I know I didn’t have to make so much noise.

  29 Days

  The morning you marry your true love, I will have an ex-boyfriend laughing somewhere because I told him that it was foolish to be jealous of you; but it was always you. It was you before I moved in with him and it was you after I left. It is not still you, but sometimes I do wake up with a pit in my stomach that goes by your name.

  The morning you marry your true love, I will ball my hands into fists and sink like a worm into the bottom of a bottle of fine silver tequila.

  The morning you marry your true love, at least three people will say to me: I thought you’d let this go already. I will try to explain that leaving you is something I am still trying to process. I will try to explain that letting go comes in waves. I will try to explain that even when we didn’t appreciate each other anymore, you still felt like my other half. Sometimes you still feel like my other half.

  The morning you marry your true love, everything will taste like quiet panic. Like being startled by house-sounds in the dark. Like walking up to the wrong person in public. I will keep trying to picture your hand with someone else’s ring on it.

  The morning you marry your true love, I will block out the memory of you sitting across from me in a café on Main Street, whispering like you were worried he could hear you from three states away.

  The morning you marry your true love, I will have a mouth full of regret. I will be stuck six feet deep in the memory of your fiancé calling me up just to gloat, to say that he had won. Like you were a thing to be won. Like there was ever any competition. I will recall laughing, saying, you can have her. Hanging up the phone. The sound of it is ugly. It does not feel like me. It does not sound like me.

  Maybe it will be more than a mouthful.

  The Perseids

  it’s late and i am thinking

  of the voicemails i never left you.

  all that time i never spent pleading

  with your machine.

  the fight i did not put up.

  the difference it would and would not

  have made.

  the last time i saw a meteor shower

  i thought about the taste of your shampoo

  and how your hair might look

  pooled on my pillowcases again.

  even after

  we hated the sound of each other’s voices

  i still wouldn’t have minded

  pulling your hair

  from the shower drain,

  but you don’t know that.

  i like to think i’m over it.

  i like to think one day i will have stories

  that don’t all start with your name.

  i like to tell myself that i wasn’t

  really in love with you but even on the months

  i forget to pay my credit card bills,

  i still remember to check your horoscope.

  A List Of Things That Remind Me Of You

  turtleneck sweaters / violin cases / eating chocolate icing from the jar / 7am / writing letters / checking the mailbox / checking the mailbox again / black ankle boots / minivans / bad parking jobs / gelato / custom lingerie / fake red roses / post-it notes / mix CDs / obscure indie music / 9:30 Club / that one E.E. Cummings poem / holding hands at the movies / Birdies Coffee Shop / cornfields / honey spice rooibos tea / polka dots / pianos / pool tables / hot chocolate / cinnamon / the way it feels when you ache and ache and ache and then sink to the bottom of the bathtub and for just a few minutes it doesn’t ache anymore

  The first time I really heard my own name, it was in your mouth.

  I Still Forget We’re Not Even Friends

  I still wake up

  with things to

  tell you.

  One day, I won’t.

  I will learn placid acceptance.

  I will stop panicking when I can’t perfectly remember

  the pitch of your voice

  or the curve of your jawline.

  The smell of cinnamon won’t

  make me sad anymore.

  At this point it’s not about finding someone

  to replace you. I have spread my love

  all over the place.

  It’s about trying to sleep

  knowing

  I live in a world that

  has your hands

  in it.

  This Is What The Poems Are For:

  telling other people the things

  I can no longer tell you

  24 Days

  I found one of your old perfumes

  in that suitcase you lent me

  when I moved off of Uhler Lane.

  Instead of throwing i
t away,

  I unscrewed the cap

  and emptied what was left of the bottle

  onto my bedroom floor,

  spent the next few days

  unable to sleep

  without a window open.

  I’m still airing you out of that room.

  Lemon And Honey

  For my sixteenth birthday, my mother threw me a Sour Sixteen instead of a sweet one. We sent out green and yellow cards. We ate large slices of lemon cake. You and I weren’t friends yet, but you were someone else’s date in every one of those photos.

  For a short amount of time, you lived next to a beekeeper. You gifted me honey in a repurposed jam jar and I left it in the cupboard until it crystallized. I thought that this meant it was ruined.

  There are other truths but these are the ones that stick with us even now.

  Chameleon

  I am different more often than I am the same.

  I don’t know how anybody falls in love with me.

  I don’t know how anybody keeps up.

  19 Days

  I read somewhere

  that love only gets old

  if you let it.

  I can’t remember why we stopped

  writing love letters

  and started crying drunkenly into the phone.

  I can’t remember when we stopped

  watering our roots.

  I can’t remember when we started

  competing for the sun.

  I tell everyone

  who asks about you

  that we outgrew each other.

  I still don’t know if that’s the truth.

  Maybe we just got

  tired.