Honeybee
Page 4
The Third Apology
I don’t want to talk about the things that we said.
I want to thank you for spending years fighting with me even when we weren’t on the same side. I want to thank you for all of your loud opinions and the maple gingersnap gelato and most of the letters. I want to thank you for making me feel like I was never alone, for battling distance and almost always coming up okay, for seeing me through the worst days. The depression when neither of us knew what to call it. The bad friends. The poor choices. I want to thank you for the poems and the songs and the comics. All of that endless creating we did together. All of that laughter. The hand-holding. The showing up. I want to thank you for always showing up.
You used to tell me that I only had to stay strong until you came home. I just try to stay strong all the time now.
I hope you do the same.
Forgiveness
For the nights that bled into crusty-eyed mornings. For the boys with vodka breath taking up too much of the bed. For the bruises and everything that has ever pinned me down. For the misunderstandings and the overfull stomachs and the messed up lipstick. For the times I missed the train. For the bad roommates and the busted AC and every time I got my period in brand new underwear. For the times I wanted to die and every pen that ran out of ink and all of the house plants I’ve killed out of neglect. For catcalling. For the pets that went to live on farms but really didn’t go to live on farms. For throwing up from drinking and throwing up from jellyfish stings and throwing up from crying. For the years I thought I had to be pretty and quiet. For the news, every day. For western black rhinos going extinct. For broken cell phone chargers. For bad weather on good hair days. For saying yes when I really meant no. For sitting alone at the bar on my twenty-second birthday. For missing the flight. For anxiety and fruit going rotten and spilling nail polish all over the kitchen floor. For wanting to kiss someone and never saying anything about it. For the people who don’t like my poems and the times I have been followed home from the bar and every argument I’ve had with my mother about my sexuality. For lost luggage and people who don’t have the heart to change. For toothaches and heartaches. For finding out that neither of us could bear to stay.
15 Days
I still do not think
anyone could swim in the
wake of you right now.
A Letter To My First Love
Look, I’m not sorry you weren’t the first person I kissed. Everybody needs a little practice to get it right. I still don’t think I was ever ready for you.
I’m not sorry you weren’t the first person I kissed, but I wish I’d met you on the playground. I wish we’d held hands when we were too small for people to make a big deal out of hand holding. I wish I could have kissed you under the slide, pressed you down in the mulch, surrounded by the sounds of hand games and hopscotch.
Look, I’m not saying I’m still in love with you or anything. Things can be important even though they’re not important in the same way anymore. You still occupy space inside of me somewhere.
I’m not still in love with you or anything but sometimes when I hear a certain song or drive past my high school, I feel like I’m sixteen years old in a homecoming dress, and we’re laughing about boys over our watered down punch. I feel your head slipping down onto my exposed shoulder and I still don’t want to move.
Look, I want you to know this doesn’t change anything.
A Series Of Preemptive Wedding Toasts
I WANT TO BE ANGRIER THAN I AM
I STILL DON’T FORGIVE YOUR PARENTS FOR RAISING YOU TO BELIEVE YOU HAD TO MARRY THE FIRST MAN WHO TOUCHED MORE THAN YOUR HEART, BUT I HOPE YOU’RE HAPPY
I FEEL HOLLOWED OUT WITH GUILT TODAY
I THOUGHT ABOUT SHOWING UP AT THAT CHURCH BUT I DON’T WANT TO RUN AWAY WITH YOU, I JUST WANT TO KNOW IF YOU’RE OKAY
IN LIEU OF SOMETHING FROM YOUR REGISTRY, I PROMISED I’D STOP WRITING ABOUT YOU
LOVE IS PATIENT, LOVE IS KIND, I AM NEITHER OF THOSE THINGS, AND I AM ALSO NOT IN LOVE WITH YOU ANYMORE
THEY SAY YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO MARRY YOUR BEST FRIEND AND MAYBE THAT EXPLAINS WHY I USED TO PICTURE US IN WEDDING DRESSES BUT IT DOESN’T EXPLAIN HOW YOU WENT THROUGH WITH THIS
WHAT I MEAN TO SAY IS: I RESPECT YOUR CHOICES BUT I DON’T THINK I’M EVER GOING TO UNDERSTAND THEM
WHAT I MEAN TO SAY IS: I SHOULD HAVE PICKED UP YOUR DRUNK PHONE CALLS BUT I WAS TRYING TO TAKE CARE OF MYSELF
I KNOW IT WOULDN’T HAVE CHANGED ANYTHING
THESE ARE OUR LIVES NOW AND ALL WE CAN DO IS LIVE THEM AS BEST WE CAN AND I HOPE THAT’S WHAT YOU’RE DOING
I HOPE YOU STILL CALL HOME WHENEVER YOU NEED TO AND I HOPE YOU NEVER FEEL STUCK OR HELPLESS OR UNWANTED OR ALONE
I HOPE YOU NEVER THINK ABOUT ME
HERE’S TO YOU AND THE REST OF YOUR LIFE
I WANT YOU TO HAVE EVERYTHING, ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING
11 Days (Instead Of Calling You)
A poet told me that if I give this up, I will give anything up. If I give this to you, I will have given you everything. I keep thinking that I’m staying away for you but maybe she’s right. Maybe it’s for me too. Maybe I still want something to hold onto.
I guess that’s selfish, which I am told love isn’t.
I guess that’s why we aren’t in it anymore.
My phone lights up in the dark and I get out of bed to look at the stars. I keep your name curled up at the base of my tongue just in case I ever have to use it. I hope that it’s you, but it never is. It’s an email from the bank, a Twitter notification. I am plagued by late night Snapchats from people who have never heard me talk about you before.
You are getting married in eleven days and sometimes when I want to text you about it, I write about it instead. You are either sick of reading about yourself by now or you don’t pay attention to my poems anymore. I don’t know which is worse. Sometimes instead of picking up the phone, I pick up the last letter you wrote to me. The one where you lay everything out eloquently:
YOU have a heart like an animal in a snare.
YOU are going to die alone.
YOU are empty.
YOU, YOU, YOU.
Me, me, me. Someone told me once that it helps to remember why we stopped talking in the first place. They weren’t wrong.
My phone lights up in the dark and I get out of bed to look at the stars. I take a walk. I think a lot about the moon. About how if I am small then you-and-I are smaller still. A blip somewhere on some cosmic radar. Something that has already happened. Something that is somewhere finished and tucked away. If we both look at the same moon and you still don’t want to call to say goodnight then maybe we’re not looking at the same moon anymore. Maybe the moon has nothing to do with it. Maybe you’re not the same person. Maybe I’m not.
My phone lights up in the day and there is no moon to contemplate. How easy it would be to make a misdial that rang in your kitchen. Instead I grab a coffee with another girl. I put my phone away. I pour myself like sugar into everything she has to say. I don’t try to make metaphors out of anything.
Sometimes when my fingers itch for the phone, I pick it up. I call a friend instead and talk to them like a sponsor. I say, I’m thinking about using again. They say, baby, you don’t want to go down that road. I say, I know, I know, I know.
I take out your contact information and put it back in again.
Catch And Release
I’m not sure if I believe in poetry as healing
so much as I believe in poetry as fishing lures
baiting you out of me.
On Writing My First Book Of Poetry
When I decided to tell the world how badly I’d loved her,
they called it brave.
As if it were some noble thing I’d done, making a catastrophe out of a mess, setting up a tourist section in my own bed and selling souvenirs.
All of those poems about wanting. All of those poems about her and honey and me throwing myself through the wringer.
/>
It was not brave to break like that. It was not brave to write those poems. It was not even brave to stop.
It was just hard.
The B Word
I kiss the pretty boy in black semi-sheer thigh highs, plant my hands on his hips, pull teasingly at his garter belt and I can hear my mother shaking her head across town. I can’t tell if she is disappointed or confused.
I lie awake next to the girl who smells like sweat and lemonade. I think about shoving my face into her hair but she falls asleep talking about her boyfriend. On the day my mother corners me in the kitchen to ask if I’m A FUCKING LESBIAN, I say no. I wonder if it counts as a lie when I still don’t have a word for all the different kinds of porn I like to watch.
When I come out, I am eight thousand miles away from home. I am sharing the bed of a substitute teacher. He likes to tie me up at night and kiss me in the morning. My mother says she’s not surprised but she doesn’t understand. When I use the B word, all I can think about is the first time bisexuality came up with her in conversation and she laughed.
THEY’RE JUST GREEDY. IT’S LIKE THEY DON’T EVEN CARE WHO THEY’RE FUCKING. THEY’D FUCK ANYTHING. THEY MAY AS WELL FUCK A DOG.
My grandmother asks where they went wrong, if it’s because my father left and you know, the other stuff. She wants to be able to call my sexuality a result of trauma but I won’t let her. She says, LOOK: IF YOU FALL IN LOVE, I’LL BE HAPPY FOR YOU BUT YOU CAN’T MARRY A WOMAN BECAUSE IT PERSONALLY OFFENDS ME. She calls me a dyke and says it’s a joke. She never asks me again if I’m seeing anybody.
I have a crush on a femme who makes their living writing good lines. I swoon every time they call me baby, but I tell them I don’t know if I want to get into things. I second-guess myself into a corner. What if it is just a phase? What if I change my mind? Do I really need to put my family through that kind of thing? I never tell my mother we’ve been dating but I tell her when we break up and she still cries for three whole days.
I make arrangements to meet up with a man I’m in love with and I don’t tell anyone in my family because I don’t feel like explaining that it doesn’t mean I’m straight. I go to London alone. When I return, I make up stories about landmarks and tourist attractions. I tell no one where I really spent my time.
My coworker asks me, Why do lesbians use dildos? Why don’t they just fuck men? And I want to say, have you ever met a man?? but I feel like the joke is too gay and I’m always trying to convince everyone I know that my sexuality is a revolving door which never stops spinning long enough to check IDs.
Still, somehow, I am always getting carded.
OKAY BUT HOW MANY WOMEN HAVE YOU BEEN WITH? HOW MANY THREESOMES HAVE YOU HAD? I MEAN ALL GIRLS ARE A LITTLE GAY. YOU DON’T HAVE TO FLAUNT IT LIKE THAT. YOU JUST DO THIS TO GET GUYS, DON’T YOU?
When the Supreme Court ruling comes through for marriage equality, I sob quietly in the bathroom, but I don’t know if I can really celebrate the way that I want to because I don’t feel gay enough to talk about the struggle, but I’m not straight. My mother finds me in the morning to ask if I’ve heard the news. She says, I SUPPORT YOU BECAUSE YOU’RE MY DAUGHTER BUT I DON’T AGREE WITH IT AND I DON’T THINK IT’S RIGHT.
I say, then you don’t really support me, and she doesn’t say anything.
4 Days (Hair Of The Dog)
I was told once
to lick salt before I started drinking
because it would ease the pain the next morning.
Maybe I should have done all my crying before we met.
Maybe if I’d done this out of order, it would feel
different, somehow better.
Or just less.
I was told once
to find part of the animal that ripped you up.
Track down the thing that ran out on you.
Grab whatever kicked your ass last night
and kiss it on the mouth.
I was told once
that the only way through this is caffeine.
I was told once
that the only way through this is exercise.
I was told once
that you just have to shoulder it
and get on with your day
but this morning I got stuck on the way to the shower.
Doubled over on the bathroom floor.
Everything wanted to come up.
The smell of your shampoo.
Waking up next to you.
Your love letters.
The bridge of your nose.
Your red coat.
Everything wanted to come up
but the vodka.
So I let it.
I was told once that’s what you’re supposed to do.
Throw everything up. Throw everything out.
Go back to bed.
Sleep until it’s over.
Roots
There were nights we were so soft,
I could feel her growing next to me;
but just because you grow together
doesn’t mean you’re meant to stay.
People don’t have roots for a reason.
The best thing about intertwining
hands together is that you can stop
when you need to.
1 Day (Gravitational Pull)
Do you think moons really love
the planets they circle around—
like in that poem we used to read
to each other?
I’ve been thinking: maybe they’re
just stuck. Maybe they don’t
know how to let go either. Maybe
gravitational pull is just code for
I don’t know how to be away from
you—but on a massive scale.
Like, baby, I know we don’t work
together. I just forget how to be a
moon when you’re not around.
I forget how to be a moon when
you’re not around, but I’m getting
the hang of it. I’m working it out.
My strength is defined, not by what I continue to carry, but by what I have allowed myself to put down.
Dirty Laundry
The first night I slept in your bed,
I got my period, ruined the sheets.
It was the universe stumbling in drunk
and slurring, this girl, oh–
this girl is gonna make you bleed.
0 Days
so this is it / this is the big shebang / my whole damn universe / falling headfirst into a black hole / this is the end of my love letters to nostalgia / my love letters to things that don’t exist anymore.
honey,
we don’t exist anymore.
can’t you hear the sound of silence out there somewhere?
-365 Days (On The Occasion Of Your First Wedding Anniversary)
You are always waiting for him
to come home and I am always
writing poems I’m not supposed
to be writing. The ones about my
mother and the ones about your
hair. I’m not sad about this
anymore.
Not in the way everyone thinks.
I almost never sulk about your
mouth. I did today, for a second.
I thought about you pulling leftover
wedding cake from the freezer,
licking thawed icing off your fingers.
You’re not my biggest heartbreak
anymore.
What a delicate relief to both of us.
The Baker’s Epilogue
A timer counts down in my kitchen and the waiting comes easily. Something about the inevitability feels comfortable and final. When it goes off, I peek into the oven to see if the pie has browned evenly. It needs to sit another minute and there’s no use forcing it before it’s ready.
Earlier today I went shopping for the apples alone. I used an adapted version of your mother’s recipe. I crimped the edges just like you showed me.
I’ve realized that it’s not as important to remember where I’ve learned things, as it is to just learn them. I don’t always have to trace everything back to its source.
When the minute has passed, I pull something fresh and full of cinnamon out of the oven. Everything is perfect. Everything is sugar-coated. I don’t see you in any of this.
You may have been part of the healing but you don’t get to be a part of what’s healed.
About The Author
Trista Mateer is a poet from outside of Baltimore, who could be living anywhere by the time you read this. Known for her eponymous blog, she is also the author of four full length collections of poetry, and won the Goodreads Choice Award in 2015 with The Dogs I Have Kissed. She is currently working as a freelance editor but still manages to spend most of her time Googling cheap airfare and writing poetry about things that don’t matter anymore.
@tristamateer
tristamateer.com
Other Work By Trista Mateer
Instead of Writing Our Breakup Poem
Before the First Kiss
[redacted]
Small Ghost
The Dogs I Have Kissed
[Dis]Connected: Stories and Poems of
Connection and Otherwise
Additional Notes & Credits
The poem referenced on page 135 is “Photograph” by Andrea Gibson.
The title on page 7 refers to Micah 4:4. “Everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree and no one shall make them afraid.”
Some of these poems can be found in their original format on the internet and in the previous edition of this book. They’re not incorrect versions. They’re just young.
“The B Word” has previously appeared on Thought Catalog and Medium.
“A Brief Note on Biphobia” is just that: a brief note. This book is about my personal experience with love and sex and all the tricky labels that go along with those things. It is not intended to be a faultless resource. Below are some actual resources if you have more questions: