Ryanne Tate

Ryanne Tate Feb 2016

You never could forgive me.
He had lips like sandpaper and your tongue was like a cherry but you never could forgive me for taking a taste.
We never made any promises.
Any vows of commitment remained unspoken and under the sheets, solemn and sweet and so easily broken, I never asked you to be devoted.
And you didn't ask me either, so I hoped you'd understand that when my hands landed in his hair, they never felt as tangled as they would in our conversations, in our words which bound my wrists like barbed wire but made me love the sting.
******* for thinking forgiveness makes you weak.
******* for fearing and for fighting something you can't understand.
You've always been too quick to raise a fist, but you don't have to break a heart to be a man.

Ryanne Tate Feb 2016

Blue Isn't So Bad After All

Your eyes were brown.
Brown like the rings of coffee left on the kitchen counter,
Because we wanted to keep the marble clean
But couldn’t find the strength to wipe away the one mess we had control over.
Brown like the floors in the living room,
Worn by our feet that twirled in circles
When we still loved each other enough to dance our worries away.
Brown like the butts of so many cigars
That I found half tucked under the bushes in the front yard,
You said you quit,
You promised,
But I guess bad habits and heavy hearts go hand in hand,
And our hearts forgot how to live lightly
When the light started to fade from our eyes.
I had this idea before I met you,
Before I fell for you wholly and completely,
That blue eyes meant danger.
They always looked so cold and menacing,
Like icicles that could hurt you so easily
And not leave a trace.
But you had brown eyes,
And I can hardly breathe through the pain I get when I realize
The only trace of you exists in the rings of coffee left on the kitchen counter,
You know,
The ones we should have just wiped away.

Ryanne Tate Feb 2016

Feeling Nothing

When I was little
I used to trail my finger through the dust on the TV screen,
Creating pictures on the darkness,
For no reason other than boredom.
I wonder if that’s why you trailed your fingers along my cheekbone.
Boredom.
Is that why you held on so long?
Is that why you only really saw me when I couldn’t see you,
And why it was only in my weakest moments that you could tell me
You didn’t like what you saw?
Or did you hang on because you meant what you said,
Because every time you said those three words
They sounded more and more warped to me
Like
You were choking on the barbs of a fenced in promise.
I remember that day that we sat on the sea wall by my house.
I chain smoked cigarettes and you tried not to look,
It made you scared to see me killing myself.
That’s what you said.
But I don’t think that was it,
I think you couldn’t look because with every exhale,
You watched an ugly part of me become even more consuming,
And you didn’t want to hate me, not really.
Because you loved me so much once.
That time in the park,
The first time under the tree and next to the pond,
When I smeared nutella on your nose,
And we were both too scared to admit how beautiful we found each others lips,
Or
In the dark of that RV,
Seeing each other clearly for the first time,
You loved me then, right?
I wish I knew when it changed.
I wish I could hunt down the exact moment that our hearts stopped exploding,
Our eyes stopped widening,
Our love stopped breathing,
So that maybe just maybe I could stop the dull pounding in my chest
That starts to echo your name every time the lights go out.
I sleep next to another boy now.
He’s an artist too, and his hands trail over me with intrigue,
Without boredom or hesitation.
But they don't hold mine like yours did
Or make my spine shiver like I’m shedding the old me over and over again.
Only yours could do that.
But
Yours are gone.

Ryanne Tate Feb 2016

Apologies

You haven’t spoken to me in a couple days.
Probably only three, maybe as many as a hundred.
The number doesn’t really matter.
Nothing does,
Because you haven’t spoken to me in a couple days,
And even though every hour that passes
Sends another wave of battery acid-like grief coursing down my whimpering throat,
I can’t feel it without feeling you.
I can’t feel the burning in my chest,
Or the stretching beast in my stomach,
Begging me to eat something,
Anything.
All I feel is sorry.
And sorry will never be enough.
Sorry erases the past like writing poems erases feelings.
It just makes everything more real.
It makes every touch I gave to a man that wasn’t you,
Every bed I slept in that wasn’t yours,
Every heart I played with while you waited to play mine
So much more real.
I could crawl out of this skin,
Burn it and watch the smoke write my regrets
One
Two
Three thousand times around the treetops,
And it still wouldn't be enough.
I wish it would
I wish it would
I wish it would, it could,
It should but it can’t and I can’t stop clawing at my throat
Trying to pull out the words that will make you forgive me
And they're not even there.
You’re right to not have spoken to me.
What is there to say to the girl who danced in deceptions
And then pinned your heart to her sleeve
Over and over,
As though she even deserved to wear it in the first place.
How could you have known she’d been leaving it in the top drawer of the bedside table
Each time she stepped out at night,
Only to curl up and kiss it and cry each time she found herself back in her sheets.
If I said I loved you would you even believe me?
Would you even hear it?
Or would it shatter around you like every promise I made,
Like every idea of the future we’d spent so much time crafting,
I wish we could have that future,
But I can’t see it anymore,
And I don’t know if you’d open your eyes long enough to try.

Ryanne Tate Feb 2016

Untitled

Tonight,
Like the feathers on the water,
We’re floating until our strands get
The same way my body gets
Under the sheets.
Why do you always have dirt under your fingernails?
I want to chew them
Between my bones
And taste them on my swollen pink tongue.
I imagine your tongue on my cheek.
It makes me tingle
I think saliva is disgusting.

The water looks good from where we’re sitting
And you just cut your hair
And left it in the snow
Why were so many people there?
I watched my dog shed for years.
Batting eyelashes over layers and layers of body
Sounds silly to me
And hardly seems worth the effort
When there are so many productive things to do
Like curling up in bed
And letting sleep touch you like a lover would.

If I spit into this river
Would it sink or stay
Long enough to hear you scold me,
Yes I’m unladylike
And the river doesn’t need a shoeshine today.
New York is a scary place because there are so many people willing to make your shoes look pretty while simultaneously aching to watch you hate your reflection
If you’re one of the living.
God knows how the undead
Flock to the cities for a 9 to 5.
You cough and your skin erupts in goosebumps
Maybe the wind is better in bed than I am.

— The End —