The Dogs I Have Kissed

by Trista Mateer

  And now you.

  I know that I am lucky to be alive at the same time as you. I know that finding you was a cosmic needle in a haystack, a joke of Internet cables and telephone wires. But I also know that you are more afraid of opening up than losing me. And I know that you stop at car accidents just like my father.

  Today I Accidentally Told Someone That I Love You

  It slipped out a little too easily, dangled off my lips,

  tumbled across the bed. It was a somersaulting,

  taunting affair.

  I know it’s not the kind of thing I should be

  telling someone else. I should be whispering it into

  the bends of your knees and spelling it out

  with my mouth on your mouth;

  but you are still too far away

  and I am not braver than distance.

  I am as reliable as public transportation.

  I have hands made of guardrails and a train station heart;

  it is full of strangers always trying to get somewhere else.

  It’s not a final destination.

  I don’t ever want to hold you back

  from where you’re trying to get to.

  I’m sorry I never tell you what I really mean.

  Improper Emergency Procedure

  You have more fucking fault lines than California,

  but I’d still settle somewhere along your coast

  if you’d take the time to stop shifting for a moment.

  I’m not afraid of the ground moving under my feet,

  but I’m a little worried about your tectonic plates

  grinding up against mine in a way

  that sends people running for door frames.

  Fresh Mint

  I have written twenty-seven poems

  about how it feels to be sad and still love you

  at the same time

  and no, baby—no—I don’t mean

  got up on the wrong side of the bed sad;

  I mean can’t get out of the bed sad.

  I mean waking up with a pit in my stomach

  that didn’t come from a cherry.

  It’s nothing like a peach.

  If you plant it in the ground, nothing

  will grow from it.

  Nothing ever grows here.

  I have lips laced with guilt when you kiss me.

  I watch movies about kids with cancer

  and I relate when they try to push people away

  because they know they’re on the way down.

  I always feel like I’m on the way down.

  I taste like salt.

  You taste like toothpaste.

  There’s no poetry in that. It’s just life.

  I Just Can’t Do This Right Now

  Tonight I wish I had someone’s body

  pressed up against mine. I am glad you are

  not here to see this.

  I need a man who does not look at me

  the way you look at me. I need a man who is

  willing to walk away from the mess in the morning.

  Not like you with your telephone hands.

  You are always feeling me out; you are always

  calling me back. I am ringing around the wire for

  you. Sometimes I forget how to want you and myself

  at the same time.

  I Don’t Know If I’m Cut Out for This

  The way you say my name makes me want to cry into

  dirty pillowcases. The way you say my name makes

  me want to kiss you on the mouth.

  The way you say my name makes me think of

  jogging down the street with a ponytail bouncing

  against the back of my neck: steady, rhythmic.

  Heartbeat. Pulsing. Sweat.

  The way you say my name makes me believe in

  caffeinated beverages: pressing palms together at the

  kitchen table. Forget the church. Take me to bed instead.

  Neither of us is getting any sleep.

  The way you say my name reminds me of stepping

  off a plane. The way you say my name reminds me of

  elbow- and kneepads. The way you say my name

  makes me want to try harder.

  Salt

  I want you to know that it is okay not to love me.

  I want you to know that you are not the first person

  who found it a little too tough, who took two steps

  back when my jaws started snapping.

  I want you to know that I look like I taste of

  cigarette smoke and scotch, but I just taste like salt.

  I swear that you’re not missing anything but

  band-aids and promises bent out of shape if you run

  the wrong way when I hold out my hands.

  Roll Over

  Water Me Until I Drown

  I’ve finally figured it out, okay? I know it took a long

  time. I know it took too long.

  But I don’t want to be the sad girl you fuck when

  you’re trying to love yourself. I want to be

  the house you bring potted plants into even though

  you can never remember to take care of them.

  I want to be the trees that remind you of home;

  I want you to look at my legs and think of climbing

  and broken bones and childhood games that always

  left you stranded. I want you to know that I might

  leave you stranded. I want you to know that you

  are the only thing that slows my city down.

  Promises That Don’t Sound Like Promises

  Sometimes you talk like I am someone’s favorite coffee mug

  (something familiar to keep coming back to)

  and you are a single-use picnic plate,

  (something flimsy and disposable).

  This is me telling you that I think you are wrong.

  I think we might just be pieces of the same china pattern:

  breakable

  breakable

  but something you try to keep together.

  And anyway, there’s nothing wrong

  with paper plate dinner dates.

  I could lounge on a living room floor

  and eat straight off of you

  without a single damn complaint.

  That’s It. That’s All.

  I don’t know how to say it,

  so I’m writing it down.

  I want to kiss your bad days

  on the forehead.

  I want to stroke your hair

  in the morning.

  I want to know

  what your mouth tastes like

  when you get off the phone

  with your mother.

  Like Small Children, Like Stray Dogs

  I said it before (though perhaps with less grace)

  and I’ll say it again:

  I want to take the messy parts of you in

  like small children, like stray dogs.

  Kiss them on the mouth, give them a place to stay.

  I can’t believe there are bits of you, at your age,

  that are still too young to know

  that they are worth taking care of.

  If you don’t want to look in the mirror, that’s fine.

  We will cover every piece of glass in the house.

  We will drape sheets across the bathroom walls

  and drink only out of coffee mugs;

  but I am still going to marvel

  at the blessing of your face

  at my kitchen table.

  Bunk Beds

  I want to make love to you

  in my childhood home,

  bring your hips to my hips

  in every place I ever felt small,

  find better reasons

  for staying up nights.

  Laugh Lines

  I am always moving toward you.

  On my bad days, I say to myself: “then you.”

  Sure, this now. But t
hen you.

  I will keep tossing myself life lines.

  I will keep writing myself afloat

  until I don’t have to write a poem

  for every mile marker

  from here to California.

  You and I together is the most foolish thing

  I’ve ever hoped for. You and I apart is more foolish.

  When I can’t sleep at night, I dream up

  conversations with you. I never call. I never push.

  I try not to whine. I just write it all down.

  Sometimes I want to apologize

  for wanting you out loud,

  like too many people know the reasons

  I am going to have laugh lines.

  Sometimes instead of distanced pillow talk,

  I want to curl up with the phone

  and read you poetry.

  Instead, we just talk about it.

  You say, “Honey, how was your day?”

  And I say, “Today I wrote another poem

  about your coffee cup mouth

  and all the ways you still keep me up at night.”

  I hear a sigh in your smile.

  You make a sound that reminds me of

  fighting with my bags at the airport;

  but you’re still too far away.

  You Are My Moving Forward

  How many people have told you that you feel like

  coming home? I’m sure you’ve been somebody’s shelter,

  somebody’s summertime, somebody’s everything before

  you were anything to me.

  You don’t remind me of home. You don’t remind me

  of honeysuckles or fried green tomatoes or twisted ankles.

  You don’t remind me of running back toward anything.

  You are not safe walls to hide behind.

  You are everything on the other side.

  Between Your Anxieties and My Pen

  I don’t know how we get anything done.

  You drum your fingers on my throat and think of rain on the roof of the house you grew in (not up, but sideways): the place where your last love left you alone; the place where you learned how to cope with silence and water your own plants.

  And then you tell me about it—

  and honey, I love to hear you talk, but I want to get in an argument with your mouth that neither of us can win, tongues twisted up like roots. I want to kiss you and feel like I am growing (and then I want to write about it).

  I want to get my hair caught in the thick of you. I want you to understand that I will not always be sprouting next to you, so maybe we should take advantage of this little plot of land while we have it.

  So you kiss me.

  You kiss me and tell me that I taste like sand. You tell me that you have dreams of the ocean dragging me away. You tell me that you wake up afraid of riptides and ocean currents; and then you kiss me again.

  And I keep thinking about waves breaking on a shore somewhere until I break away to catch some breath so I can say, “Lover, that was a pretty good line; do you mind?”

  And, baby, maybe it’s my fault. Maybe when I put down this pen, I’ll stop looking for ways to write you in and you’ll stop worrying that every word you say is filed away somewhere in writing.

  Until then, maybe we’ll just have to try harder to stay in the moment. Kiss me until we stop thinking about growing and ocean currents.

  Kiss me until nobody cares about the metaphors anymore.

  Teach Yourself to Recognize Risk but Still Take It

  The first time you hear something like love

  in the soft tone of his voice, do not act like he has

  given you the moon.

  Act like he has given you smooth blown glass,

  fine china teacups: something beautiful

  but absolutely breakable. Something with the potential

  to be so, so sharp.

  But swallow the lump in your throat.

  Do not bother padding the floor. Waste no time

  with an overly heavy grip. We lose so much

  for fear of letting go.

  You have to let it breathe. Put it to use.

  It’s no good tucked safely away. Roll over in the bed

  and bare your neck to teeth. Just buy some thick soles

  for when the glass breaks.

  Please Don’t Bring This Up on the Phone

  I keep rewriting this poem.

  I want it to make more sense.

  I want it to be less honest.

  I keep counting off things to blame it on.

  Something about a rocky mountain high.

  Something about the altitude messing with my head.

  Something about missing the sound of your voice

  more than anything.

  I miss the sound of your voice more than anything.

  Six days ago, on the bottom bunk of someone else’s bed,

  I wrote you some words in a marbled composition book:

  “I can’t go another day choking back

  I love you.

  I feel it in my shoulders when I breathe.”

  Oranges

  I wake up in the middle of the night

  and I text you things like “why aren’t you in my bed?

  come eat a bowl of oranges off of me.”

  I don’t know what this means.

  I don’t even know what I’m trying to say.

  Something about you and me in bed

  with sticky fingers

  and wet mouths

  is appealing to me even in half-sleep.

  Maybe oranges are a metaphor for life.

  Maybe I still don’t know how many seeds

  I’m gonna find in you.

  Maybe oranges are just supposed to mean summer heat

  because I’m sick of all this cold, cold, cold.

  Maybe it doesn’t matter.

  Maybe the only thing that means something

  is that I am always waking up in the middle of the night

  and reaching out to you.

  You with those warm hands.

  You with that wet mouth.

  Little Matchstick Girl

  Have you ever noticed how wanting

  burns you up

  from the inside out?

  Like one moment I am whole,

  but then I hear

  your voice on the phone

  and I swear to god

  three blocks away from here

  they can smell smoke.

  Ask Again Later

  I miss you so much it feels gross.

  It feels wet. It feels nauseating.

  I want to rip out my heart

  and shake it like a Magic 8 Ball.

  Is this okay, is this okay, is this okay,

  or does it make me weak?

  Coffee Cups and Fruit Poems

  Five hours since I heard it last,

  I miss your voice again.

  There is something to be said for all of this missing

  but I do not know what it is.

  I just know that it feels right to say it.

  I miss you.

  I miss you.

  Like coming down from a caffeine high,

  I’m still figuring it out.

  Oh, boy. Oh, man. Oh, you mess.

  What right do you have to leave me like this?

  Questioning all of my other love poems.

  Writing odes to fruit

  and thinking about the taste of you.

  I miss you.

  I miss you in some wild way.

  Some rain smell on the earth kind of way.

  Some scratching your name into trees kind of way.

  Some scratching my name into you kind of way.

  Even this poem is me marking my territory.

  Tell me this counts for something.

  To Be a Metaphor for Starlight

  I write about you

  like I wouldn’t mind scalding my mouth on you.

  I write about mountains,
and stars,

  and the curve of you:

  some hiker’s trail spine I’d like to get lost along,

  some light in all this dark.

  Something wild. Something I’d like to map out.

  Something like an earthquake

  or a bicycle wreck.

  Something I need elbow- and kneepads for.

  Twenty metaphors for fucking,

  twenty-six for fucking distance

  and I still can’t blame you for not wanting to cross it,

  for keeping your hands to yourself,

  for reading all of these poems and not wanting

  to get caught up in the mess.

  Not wanting to be a peach

  or a bowl of oranges spread out on the bed.

  Not wanting to be a metaphor for starlight

  or a bottle of Shiraz