Honeybee Read online

  Praise

  Winner - 2015 Goodreads Choice Awards—Poetry (The Dogs I Have Kissed)

  “Gut truths and gin-clear imagery, Trista Mateer reminds us of all those places left unexplored by language.”

  —Foreword Reviews

  “This is a collection that will beg you to be dog-eared, coffee-stained, and shared.”

  —Amanda Lovelace, Author of The Princess Saves Herself in This One

  “With Honeybee, Trista has captured in amber something beautiful and tragic, joyful and painful.”

  —Iain S. Thomas, Author of I Wrote This For You

  “Bitter sweet with memory and softness, this book is an intimate and profound look at sexuality, heartbreak, loneliness, loss, love, healing and everything in between.”

  —Nikita Gill, Author of Your Soul Is A River

  “How can something that hurts so much still be so tender? Mateer triumphs in this exploration. We are humbled to be witness.”

  —Ari Eastman, Author of Bloodline

  “In Honeybee, Trista Mateer pulls the layers back on an old love and invites her readers to pick apart the pieces with her. She spares no one and nothing and the result is beautiful and awful and gorgeous and gut-wrenching.”

  —Fortesa Latifi, Author of No Matter The Time

  “Trista writes about love so honestly. It’s messy, reckless hope. It’s sticky-fingered stubbornness. This collection is a must-read for any queer femme, and for anyone who has ever lost themselves in a feverish want.”

  —Clementine von Radics, Author of Mouthful of Forevers

  Copyright © 2018 Trista Mateer

  Cover and internal design © 2018 Central Avenue Marketing Ltd.

  Cover Illustration: Marissa Johnson

  Interior Images: Trista Mateer

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Central Avenue Publishing, an imprint of Central Avenue Marketing Ltd.

  www.centralavenuepublishing.com

  HONEYBEE

  978-1-77168-136-0 (pbk)

  978-1-77168-137-7 (epub)

  978-1-77168-138-4 (mobi)

  Published in Canada

  Printed in United States of America

  1. POETRY / LGBT 2. POETRY / Subject & Themes - Love

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  for her,

  wherever she is

  but for myself too

  a note from the author:

  Years ago, a girl I used to love drove across state lines to get to a poetry reading, pulled out a piece of notebook paper, and approached the feature. I don’t know what she said, but she came home with a handwritten note addressed to me from my favorite poet that read: “Trista, keep writing! The world needs your voice! Loud Loud Loud!”

  I took it under consideration but I didn’t really start writing until she left. It was long, and it was drawn out, and you can thank Andrea Gibson for the fact that it was Loud.

  Honeybee is a collection about letting go, and like anyone who’s ever successfully let anything go will tell you, you have to feel everything before you can put it down. What this means is that letting go is rarely a straightforward process. It’s messy and it’s repetitive, and it happens in waves of trying to make things work and trying to move on at the same time. If I’ve done my job right, this book reflects that. I wrote it as things were unraveling. I put the original versions of these poems out into the world before things were truly over, because I wanted things to be over. This book, as it sits here now in its entirety, is an honest admission that something has ended.

  I still write about it from time to time. I still press my fingers to the bruise. That’s okay. So many people have reached out to me since I started sharing this work online. You all asked if it got better and I said, yes. Yes.

  It’s not the same hurt anymore.

  In The End

  I am going to hurt you.

  You are going to hurt me.

  But we will do it with practiced fingers

  and passionate mouths

  and I swear to God

  it will be worth something.

  Petrichor

  Shoes muddy from all that kicked up dirt and last night’s rain.

  Faces flushed from walking. It is September,

  still mostly summer-warm and

  you have your hand in mine.

  In the parking lot of Hoffman’s Home Made Ice Cream,

  we’re taking turns sucking up a chocolate shake and

  I can taste your chapstick

  left over on the straw

  every time I stick it in my mouth

  and pull.

  We’re nervous, laughing because this

  is the closest thing to kissing we can do where people will see it.

  And you say, it’s always going to be like this, isn’t it?

  All soft, and breathless.

  I say, I hope not.

  Tenderness In Brevity:

  her lipstick stuck to the side

  of my best coffee cup, post-wash

  Spun Sugar

  The apples of your cheeks

  taste more like strawberries:

  sticky-sweet and pink. We’re young

  so everything sits on the tongue like this.

  Everything is a promise

  or a bottle of vodka mixed with lemonade.

  A dress covered in sunflowers.

  An overturned picnic basket.

  Your blush, a cascade of color

  from ballet shoes to fairy floss.

  Your skin, like spun sugar.

  It draws all the ants

  to the spread we make of each other.

  No longer just girls,

  because love has turned us inside out.

  You are the first thing in a long time

  that has made me want to write

  poetry again.

  Hands In The Sun

  Your touch

  gets me so tender,

  everything comes up

  black and blue.

  My heart

  looks like a bruise

  and I almost don’t mind.

  God, I almost don’t mind.

  Our Own Vine And Fig Tree

  When you go away to college, you don’t ask for

  your books back. I take your copy of Everything Is

  Illuminated and highlight every passage about love.

  I keep it in the soft place, with the walls made of

  crushed red velvet, and I wait for you to find your

  way back to the world we made for each other,

  the place where it was safe for you to want me.

  Going Through The Motions

  Loneliness aims to make a spectacle of me

  and I let it.

  I stutter in polite conversation.

  I forget how to say my own name.

  I don’t know what I am doing here without you.

  You Tell Me Whenever You’ve Met A Boy Your Parents Will Like (Which Is To Say, Any Boy With A Working Knowledge Of Suburban White Christianity)

  Conversations about him always start the same way. You say, I want to marry a musician. I want to have five children. I want to be able to see my future unfolding out in front of me like an interstate map.

  I usually don’t say anything at all.

  I juggle the names behind every other tongue in your mouth: Pe
ter, Matthew, David, Adam. Each one comes with the promise of things I don’t know how to give you.

  The Baker’s Lament

  You know the way you feel right before the kitchen timer goes off and you pull something fresh and full of cinnamon out of the oven? That moment made up of waiting. Nothing exists but you and the clock and the promise of something sweet and warm.

  That’s how I feel right before you walk into a room. When I can hear your footsteps on the floorboards but you haven’t quite reached the door. And in that moment, everything is fine. Everything is more than fine. Everything is dusted-flour fingertips and your sister’s laughter down the hall. Everything is sugar-coated.

  I know this isn’t going to end well, but I don’t think it matters. I’m still stuck in that moment right before the timer goes off.

  Everything is perfect. Everything is fine.

  I slept incredibly well before I met you.

  Questions For Small Town Girls (Who Like Kissing Girls)

  If her mother brings up Leviticus in polite conversation

  and my mother laughs when she hears the word bisexual,

  how much room do we have to breathe

  in the middle?

  Is it me that makes this wrong

  or is it my body

  or is it what I want to do with my body?

  How do you effectively hold onto something

  that you don’t want other people to see in your hands?

  What if I want other people to see it?

  Perks

  we grab coffee

  every Tuesday at a shop

  around the corner from my house

  and when the cashier asks

  if the order is together or separate,

  she used to always say,

  together

  Untitled

  I feel you on the edges of me

  when you used to be in the center

  and I don’t know if this is worth

  putting a name to.

  You Break The News Like Bread At The Table

  By which I mean, we are in Panera when you bring up The New Boy and his holy, holy mouth. The endless possibility of him. The miracle of his breath on your skin and every assurance behind it.

  You tell me that he kisses like security, like a vow, like a big church wedding with your mother crying and your father stoic, but happy.

  You tell me that this doesn’t have to change anything between us.

  Your phone goes off and you smile the same way you used to when I brought you flowers or wrote you poetry. Fruit punch is staining your mouth red and for the first time, I wonder about the cost of tasting it.

  In Which Fear Sleeps Between Us

  You call it a sin when we kiss

  and you only hear the word unholy

  in your mother’s voice.

  What a slow way to die, baby.

  Day after day after day.

  You Couldn’t Just Leave?

  You had to stand there saying:

  I love you, I love you, I love you

  we’re soul mates, you and I, but that doesn’t mean it works

  that doesn’t mean it works

  that means my soul can’t bear to be without yours

  but that doesn’t mean it works

  Postscript

  You said,

  I know it always sounds like I’m saying goodbye, but I’m not.

  And you were right.

  I am the one saying goodbye.

  I Fucked Up

  I don’t remember anything before you.

  I never even understood the way light could flood a room

  until I saw you walk into one.

  Walking away from you feels like not taking care of myself.

  It feels like sleeping too long and never eating breakfast

  and forgetting to exfoliate.

  It feels like nervous hands and paper cuts.

  Restlessness.

  Irritation.

  A Wish

  one day

  we stop looking for our keys

  and pick each other like stubborn locks

  that won’t open for anyone else

  Leftovers

  In the produce section, I think I hear your name, but no one is around. I want to call you up right now and ask you to dinner.

  I knew that I loved you when I started catching myself daydreaming about making grocery lists with you, rinsing romaine in your kitchen sink, knowing where your silverware drawer was without having to double check. I feel so lost today that all I want is to take your spare key from under the mat and make sure I still know where you keep your measuring cups.

  I want to take a spill in aisle three just so I can run home to you and ask you to put your hands on me again. Like a bag of frozen peas, I want to press you up against everything sore.

  Another Obligatory Poem Comparing A Girl To Something Consumable

  She was the whiskey:

  a hard hit with a slow burn.

  I was the chaser.

  The Ocean Always Looked Like You

  I don’t see her eyes and think of salt spray.

  I see waves and think of her turbulence.

  I see sand and think of the way

  she has beat me to a pulp with her mouth.

  She does not remind me of anything;

  everything reminds me of her.

  The First Apology

  I’m sorry for trying to love you

  before I knew what I was doing.

  The next person I kiss

  is never going to touch the parts of me

  that you held onto.

  Honeybee

  So I thought I could walk away from love and it would let me. I thought distance might feel less like pulling on a rubber band until it snaps back—but take a look at this: see all the red on me?

  I’ve been staring at your letter for two days. Opened it at the kitchen table, didn’t even start crying until the third read-through. It doesn’t sound anything like you. Or it does and I just don’t want it to.

  Does it make it better if I understand the anger, just not what you buried it in? Does it make it better if I miss you even after reading that?

  I wrote you more poems than anyone else I ever kissed. I still held your hand after you broke my heart. You told me that love meant giving and giving and giving but at some point, all the plants drown. You never told me that part. We outgrew each other in angry, uncoordinated ways and I’m sorry for that.

  If it helps, my chest still hurts when I think about your hands. If it helps, I’m not sure I even know how to let you go.

  You said: most days I pity you more than I love you.

  I just love you.

  Young Love As A Whetstone

  Do you know what makes me more sad

  than all of our mangled-up promises?

  One day I will forget your soft, pink skin

  and your wide smile. You will be

  only

  a thing that is hard to me,

  something full of sharp edges.

  I will not remember why I wrote all of these poems.

  How I Asked You To Stay

  I turned myself inside out over the phone,

  read you the words etched on my bones and I

  hoped for once they might settle your heart

  instead of speeding it up.

  And I know—I know I have a heart like a wild thing

  with snapping jaws and matted fur

  but I’d hang up my hands on hooks for you,

  pluck out all of my sharp teeth

  for the chance to be

  easy.

  How You Left

  There was very little poetry involved.

  Shedding

  Giving my things back:

  I am too heavy to carry

  under the

  weight

  of all this new happiness.

  I was as close as skin to you once.

  Love was a museum where we took down the a
rt that was there before us and played masterpiece with all the empty space.

  Google Searches On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown

  cheap flights / sometimes I don’t feel like a person / inability to leave my bed / inability to breathe / things are moving very slow but also very fast at the same time / symptoms of depression / how long do I have to sit in the sun before my brain starts working right again / cheap flights / can you buy NyQuil in bulk / top ten foreign cities to disappear in / cheap flights / how to explain anxiety to your mother / how to explain depression to your mother / how to explain sometimes wanting to kiss girls to your mother / what to do if you come out and your parents don’t love you anymore / how to find the city farthest away from where you are currently at / cheap flights / how to pronounce Melbourne / deadliest animals in Australia / will wanting to die feel different in another country / does it matter

  Phases

  When I met you,

  I was something

  small and whole.

  I do not know how

  to get back there.

  I Promised No More Poetry

  I’d rather think of this

  as a confession:

  you are still the first person

  I want to share new things with.

  A List Of New Things

  I had to ask for directions seven different times in LAX. It’s a monstrosity built almost entirely out of anxiety. It’s a shrine to nervousness.

  I couldn’t sleep for any of my twenty-four hour flight because I was worried I’d end up with my head on the stranger next to me or the flight attendant would want to ask me a question like, who are you traveling with? And I’d have to say no one. And I couldn’t decide whether it was better to be awake and embarrassed or asleep and embarrassing. I kept doing that hypnagogic jerk thing over and over and I only know what it’s called because you told me.