Honeybee

by Trista Mateer

You are the first thing in a long time that has made me want to write poetry again.

I slept incredibly well before I met you.

You call it a sin when we kiss and you only hear the word unholy in your mother’s voice.

Another Obligatory Poem Comparing A Girl To Something Consumable She was the whiskey: a hard hit with a slow burn. I was the chaser.

She does not remind me of anything; everything reminds me of her.

you are still the first person I want to share new things with.

There’s a constellation here called the Southern Cross that you can’t see from the United States mainland. Every part of my life has pieces of you in it but this one.

Baby, I don’t think you understand the level of insecurity it takes for someone to want to write God angry letters.

You are not defined by the people you walk away from, and you are not defined by the people who walk away from you.

You are not the moon or the sun, a planet or a dwarf star. I am not stuck in your gravitational pull. You are a girl too far away, with chapped lips and messy skin and yellow hair—and I love you. Maybe that is the same thing.

I don’t remember what to do with my verbs when you are not around to conjugate them.

Amazing, all the things you can look past when Christ gets involved. Amazing, all the things you can’t.

It is okay to spend your grocery money on wine and hair dye. Sometimes you have to.

It took me too long to realize it was not romantic(, tender, or healthy) to love someone else more than I loved myself.

I’m sorry for trying to love you before I knew what I was doing,

You are almost always going to want more than someone else can give. Almost always.

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.

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.

Embrace the days on which you are still hurting. Sore muscles have always been a sign of growth.

Conversations about her always start the same way. Someone asks: what does your tattoo mean? And I say, I loved somebody too much once.

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.

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.

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

LOVE IS PATIENT, LOVE IS KIND, I AM NEITHER OF THOSE THINGS, AND I AM ALSO NOT IN LOVE WITH YOU ANYMORE

My strength is defined, not by what I continue to carry, but by what I have allowed myself to put down.

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.

You may have been part of the healing but you don’t get to be a part of what’s healed.