Seasonal Depressives

Angelica Whitehorne

The slime-backed stakes
of the summer tail us,
catcalling,
and then are upon us,
panting.

Hope
sweating
off
their
blotched
bodies
and
into
our
eyes.

Our spirits are from the loin of a monarch,
or some other such flying winter-morose creature,

who blooms,
blooms
under the
predatory
sun,

all too happy
to fly directly
into the unmistakably
lethal fever.

These wet-dog wantings and slow to dark nights,
a perfect illusion
we gear up for, thinking maybe,
maybe

the sadness won’t follow us
to this next season.

But May comes

around the corner in full spring,
and still,
the boot hovers over our neck,
and still,
our wings hang drenched
from our impenetrable
and unearned grief,

half-dried out in the
upper-handed degrees,
but still no match
for the weight of everything.


And when it gets the hot
we thought we wanted—

that heavy breed of heat, quick-footed if not witted,

a crushing capsaicin of sunrise
and insatiability—

we can’t help but worry
that we may just pool away




before anyone can put ice to our names.

Angelica Whitehorne is a writer living in Durham, NC with published work in Westwind Poetry, Mantis, Air/Light Magazine and Poetry South, among others. She is the author of the chapbook, The World Is Ending, Say Something That Will Last (Bottle Cap Press, 2022). Besides being a devastated poet, Angelica is a Marketing Content Writer for a clean energy loan company and a volunteer reader with Autumn House Press. You can find more of her work on Instagram at a.w.ords, and on her website: angelicawhitehorne.com.