Whitney Waters

Summer Solstice

A buck shed his antlers and they came back larger. Years
ago, a friend told me she didn’t want to be buried,
that when she was ready, she would walk into the woods and wait
until she died of thirst or hunger, but thirst always comes first.
We can starve for months and live. Can live for months and starve.

How long would it take her to go this way? I tell my therapist I’m running
on empty. Running for miles through the woods each day and not eating,
not sleeping, the gas light in my car always on and I spent my last twenty
         on sunflowers and heirloom tomatoes. She wants to know if I was lonely

         as a child, if I write poems about loneliness,
if my mother came to my games or threw me birthday parties. I tell her I ate
cereal for dinner most nights, that I was fed, and surely that counts
for something. That my mom died in her bed without meaning to. That hunger
is too much like love, and once we begin, we can never get enough.

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Whitney Waters holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College. She teaches writing at Western Carolina University and has taught at Great Smokies Writing Program. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in About Place Journal, Twelve Mile Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Great Smokies Review and elsewhere.