or people depending on me
so I’m just yo-yoing with my own existence
and depression makes that feel more like a game
than a life decision;
so most of the time
growing takes a backseat to staying,
feels less like savings accounts and budgeting,
and more like doing whatever it takes to get through,
to peel myself like gum off the bottom of my own shoes,
to clean the blood out of the carpet
while the bills change colors like mood rings.
Don’t misunderstand me:
the mess here is not romantic.
It’s not even logical.
Survival rarely is.
MISSED CONNECTION - w4w (19/30)
YOU: sun-kissed summer skin; bouquet of flowers
at the airport arrivals gate; spiked pitcher of sweet tea
poured at the most tender pace.
ME: open, open mouth.
ALTERNATE TITLES FOR MY NEXT POEM
ABOUT DEPRESSION
My Mother Tells Me (Again) That She Doesn’t Believe I Am Really Depressed, or The Poem in Which My Depression Is Treated the Same Way as My Sexuality
The Poem in Which Nobody Praises Me for Getting out of Bed but I Still Do It (Again and Again and Again)
I Think I Would Take the Pills If I Could Afford the Pills
Some Days I Wonder If It’s Not Depression (and Maybe Everybody Else Is This Flatline All the Time Too but They Know How to Deal With It/Why Can’t I Just Deal With It/Why Can’t I Just)
Me: What Should We Do Today?
Brain: Disassociate
Somebody I Used to Love Told Me That I Was Going to Die Alone and Never Be Free of This, and FUCK HER but I Don’t Know, Maybe She Was Right in That Backwards Asshole Kind of Way She Was Usually Right About Shit
24 & 25 HAVE A CONVERSATION
24 25
I got saddled with
a tough year.
you did. not the toughest, but
I’ve read the reports.
it was up there.
I made poor choices.
I hurt people.
people hurt you too.
I thought about quitting
poetry.
it’s still a topic of discussion.
throwing the pens into a lake.
bashing in the laptop. loving people
without needing to reduce them
to metaphors.
hey, I wasn’t THAT bad at
loving people.
[redacted]
so I disappointed people.
my whole year
was an exercise in quitting,
in putting things down—
letting things go?
not quite that, but
trying to.
look,
you pulled through.
that's what counts.
do you really think so?
I need to.
it’s my first day on the job
and I’ve already spent $300 on
skincare products and
self help books.
yikes.
THE YEAR OF SMOOTH DISHONESTY
Low light & soft focus. Hard, with the edges shaved off. Hard, but toned down for a broader audience.
The year you wrote about flowers and meant blood,
the year you were quiet about everything that hurt.
The string of apartments with bad roommates, the suitcase always packed on the bedroom floor, all that love you kept talking about but didn’t want to fight for
and still, it spread out sticky all over everything, connected your mouth to the lamplight, handwritten notes to the internet, poetry to the rent check
the paperbacks you bought on eBay
the ramen noodles and crunchy peanut butter
mixed together in a bowl on the counter.
The year you lived off of love but didn’t live in it,
the year loneliness permeated everything and you didn’t open your mouth to tell anyone, because how could they
not know?
THE POET SEXTING
I promised myself
that I’d never turn you into
one of those
fruit-metaphor poems
and I did it anyway.
It’s the closest I ever got to
tasting you.
note to self: remember / sometimes the pain is just pain / the hurt is not poetic / the side effects of mental illness are never romantic / being able to buy a plane ticket and run away from your problems is a privilege and a weird thing to keep doing / sometimes you are not a good person / every poem has six more-honest rough drafts / you are biting your tongue a lot for someone who has built a brand on honest confessions
AN ADMISSION,
LATE AND VIA TEXT MESSAGE
pt. 2
I’m so sick of reducing lovers to lessons.
How to let go. How to stay. How to ask for
what the heart wants.
ON MASTURBATING WHILE THINKING ABOUT PEOPLE WHO DON’T LOVE YOU ANYMORE
imagine unhinging your jaw and swallowing everything whole / imagine a touch so tender it sears its prints into you / imagine your lungs filling up at the bottom of the pool / someone spitting into your open mouth and you want it / you want it / you are glad to taste any part of them / your Achilles heel / talk about wanting death from a soft thing / talk about not knowing where to go from here / the clatter in your scatterbrain / you taste yourself and call it testing the waters / you find yourself undressed for the arrow of it / throwing a bone to your weakness / you moan: baby / baby / come back and pull apple cores out of the dumpster of me / I swear I throw away all the best cuts
[WOMAN YELLS AT STARS]
[STARS YELL BACK]
WHO SAID
IT HAD TO HURT THIS MUCH
//
WHO SAID
YOU’RE MAKING
GOOD ART?
THIS LOVE IS STILL GOOD
EVEN IF YOU’RE NOT IN IT.
THIS LOVE IS STILL GOOD
EVEN IF YOU’RE NOT IN IT.
THIS LOVE IS STILL GOOD
EVEN IF YOU’RE NOT IN IT.
THIS LOVE IS STILL GOOD
EVEN IF YOU’RE NOT IN IT.
THIS LOVE IS STILL GOOD
EVEN IF YOU’RE NOT IN IT.
THIS LOVE IS STILL GOOD
EVEN IF YOU’RE NOT IN IT.
THIS LOVE IS STILL GOOD
EVEN IF YOU’RE NOT IN IT.
THIS LOVE IS STILL GOOD
EVEN IF YOU’RE NOT IN IT.
THIS LOVE IS STILL GOOD
EVEN IF YOU’RE NOT IN IT.
THIS LOVE IS STILL GOOD
EVEN IF YOU’RE NOT IN IT.
FLUSHED CHEEKS & SOFT EXCLAMATIONS
how long do you think it takes someone to recognize a soulmate? two hours? three? when I was sitting in that train station, did you know I never thought once that you might not show up? did you know you’re the reason gin keeps sneaking into my poetry? and how come we both need to write poetry to feel clean? and can we visit GOMA again so I can view you next to the art? and is it too much for me to book a plane ticket just because you’re sad? is it enough? should I be doing more on the bad days? what good intentions don’t get swallowed up by distance? do you remember when I wrote all those poems for a man in California, while you loved a man in California? how I watched the girl I loved get married and two years later, you did the same thing? how we’re always just out of sync with each other? one move off or three steps behind? do you really think it’s true, about the stars and how I found you? did you know I’d snuff them out if I could? if it meant there’d be nothing star-crossed about this? tell me again how long you think it takes someone to recognize a soulmate? one night? two? the amount of time it takes you to buy sugar and run home to put the kettle on?
What did you do today?
Existed quietly within myself.
What will you do tomorrow?
Exist with some degree of force.
YES
girl feels like a gun
or a bullet
and you are the gun,
hands tucked into your waistband
you fumble with the trigger but
you can’t cum anymore without crying afterwards.
you thought maybe it was an emotional release,
but there’s nothing emotional
about the way you handle yourself.
there’s nothing even kind about it.
violence against women
started in your living room
and in your kitchen and at the family restaurant.
you grew up with the taste of unwanted hands
in your mouth, it’s no wonder
you take them into the bedroom too.
you watch videos of girls kissing when you feel lonely.
wrapped around women's throats.
and they say good girl and you say yes,
and they say good girl and you say yes.
RECLAIMING THE PEACH
When it ended,
when you pulled the pit out of me,
I moved into our metaphor.
I leapt across state lines
straight into the belly of an orchard state.
Sure, I fumbled at farmers’ markets
and still breathe heavy in the produce aisle,
but I put your cue into other poems.
I made it mine.
Do you hear me?
All that wanting,
all that aching,
all that capacity for love:
it never belonged to you in the first place.
THE LAST PERSON WHO BROKE MY HEART CONSOLES ME WITH A POEM pt. 3
Love
is bigger than the poetry
we both make out of it.
I THINK ABOUT HER MOUTH (REPRISE)
Maybe someday it won’t sound so much
like defeat or insincerity when I tell you
that I’m happy for you, but right now
it just sits on the tongue like
a paperweight.
WHAT I WOULD TELL YOU IF I WERE NOT STUBBORN pt. 2
You are not the moon or the sun, a planet or a dwarf star. You’re not a honeybee or a garden of roses or a lesson.
I’m sorry for the poems. I know they weren’t always kind. I took a highlighter to the past and skipped whole pages. Went over our fiction with a magnifying glass looking for truth to scrub out. They didn’t need to know everything. Maybe I still told too much. Maybe I should have kept more to myself. Maybe I should have left that whole manuscript in a bottom drawer and not put a bullhorn to my pain, but it’s the only way I knew how to heal from a break like that. I said that book was about letting go, but it wasn’t. It was about finding an ending I could stomach. It was throwing new paint on an old wall until I could stand to look at it again. I had to cover up all those spots we marked growth together.
But it’s been another year of not picking up the phone even when I want to, and the paint’s been peeling like crazy. There’s a quote by Mindy Nettifee about throwing a party for the heartbreak that made you a poet. We both know I’d order balloons with your name on them. If survival came with an acknowledgements section, I’d write you into mine,
every time.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
[redacted] was written completely within the month of April aside from minor edits, so I owe a lot of thanks to everyone around me who participated in the poem-a-day challenge for National Poetry Month.
Also, to Eric Scribner for the beautiful cover work; Fortesa Latifi, Caitlyn Siehl, and Ari Eastman for being part of my poetry family; Charlotte Crawford for holding my hand through everything;
& you, for reading, always.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Trista Mateer is a poet from outside of Baltimore, who writes most of her poetry in airports and could be living anywhere by the time you read this. Known for
her eponymous blog, she is also the author of three other collections of poetry, and won the Goodreads Choice Award in 2015 in the poetry category with The Dogs I Have Kissed.
Contact her at: tristamateer@gmail.com or @tristamateer
View more work at: tristamateer.com
Purchase signed work at: tristamateerpoetry.com